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0 


No. 748 


Mrs. Venn 


60 Cents 


Entered at the Poat-OflSce at New York, as Second-class Mail Matter. Issued Monthly. Subscription Price per Year, 12 Nos., |7.50. 

THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


QV Nnucl 


BY 

MRS. VENN 



NEW YORK 

HABTEK & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 

June, 1894 


HARPER’S FRANKLIN SQUARE LIBRARY. -LATEST ISSUES. 


NO. 


OUNT8 


NO. OENT8 

748. The Husband of One Wife. A Novel. By 

Mrs. Venn 60 

747. A Little Journey in the World. A Novel. By 

Charles Dudley Warner 75 

746. Cord and Creese. A Novel. By James De Mille. 60 

745. A Devoted Couple. A Novel. By J. Master- 

man 60 

744. The Price of a Pearl. A Novel. By Eleanor 

Holmes 60 

743. Tempo. A Novel. By Constance Cotterell. ... . 50 
742. The Swiufi; of the Pendulum. A Novel. By 

Frances Mary Peard 50 

741. The Transgression of Terence Clancy. A Novel. 

By Harold Vallings 50 

740. The Burden of Isabel. A Novel. ByJ. Maclaren 

Cobban 60 

739. Dr. Mirabel’s Theory. A Psychological Study. 

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738. Half a Hero. A Novel, By Anthony Hope. ... 50 
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735. Debit and Credit. A Novel. By Gustav Frey- 

tag. Translated by L. C. C 60 

734. A Wasted Crime. A Novel. By D. C. Murray. . 60 
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732. An Imperative Duty. A Novel. By W. D. Howells 50 
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730. The Veiled Hand. A Novel. By FrederickWicks 50 
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699. April Hopes. A Novel. By W. D. Howells 75 

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j 688 . Stand Fast, Craig-Royston ! ANovel. ByWill- 

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' 687. Marcia. A Novel. By W. E. Norris 40 

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I 685. The Snake’s Pass. A Novel. By Brain Stoker. 40 

I 684. The World’s Desire. A Novel. By 11. Rider 

! Haggard and Andrew Lang 35 

I 683. Kirsteen. A Novel. By Mrs. Oliphant 40 

! 682. My Shipmate Louise : The Romance of a Wreck. 

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679. The Entailed Hat. A Novel. By George Alfred 

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678. At an Old Chateau. A N^vel. By Katharine S. 

Macquoid 35 

677. Sowing the Wind. A Novel. By Mrs. E. Lynn 

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674. Arraorel of Lyonesse. A Novel. By Walter 

Besant. Illustrated 59 

673. The Burnt Million. A Novel. By James Payn 25 
672. The Shadow of a Dream. A Story. By W. D. 

Howells. 50 

671. Beatrice. ANovel. By H. Rider Haggard. Hid. 30 
670. In Her Earliest Youth. A Novel. By Tasma. . 45 
669. The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers. 

A Novel and its Sequel 49 

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667. The Splendid Spur. A Novel. By Q 35 


Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 

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Canada, or Mexico, on receipt of the price. 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 



HARPER 


H Movcl 



NEW YORK 

BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
1894 














CONTENTS 


CHAP. PAGE 

I. AN INTKODUCTION 1 

II. MRS. GOLDENOUR 12 

III. HER SON 24 

IV. SOME CONFESSIONS 34 

V. WAKING DREAMS 48 

VI. WHICH SHALL IT BE ? ... * 61 

VII. MAN AND MONK 72 

VIII. LIVE AND LOVE 85 

IX. A TOSS UP 96 

X. A MAN AND A BROTHER 106 

XI. A LIGHT-SOULED WOMAN 118 

XII. IN A VILLA GARDEN 131 

XIII. A BRIGHT MESSENGER 146 

XIV. IN MILAN CATHEDRAL 154 

XV. OP FRIENDSHIPS 163 

XVI. A COMMONPLACE CURE 176 

XVII. A DOUBLE CEREMONY 184 

XVIII. TEACH ME FEARLESSLY 198 

XIX. ON THE TOP OP AN OMNIBUS 214 

XX. SOMETHING WRONG 226 

XXI. TO SEE THE QUEEN 241 

XXII. AN UNEXPECTED MOVE 256 

XXIII. A TRIUMPH OP AUDACITY 266 

XXIV. WHAT HELD HER BACK 282 

XXV. A BENEDICTION 293 

APPENDIX 307 

iii 





THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


CHAPTER I 

AN INTEODUCTION 

Terence Garfoyle, M. B., D. D., Vicar of St. AmwelPs, Cam- 
bridge, was a distinguished and remarkable man : distinguished 
by attainments and position, remarkable in his personal appear- 
ance. He was once flippantly, but happil}^, described by the 
impertinent wit of a feminine critic as “ a cross between a mediaeval 
saint and a nineteenth-century gargoyle.” His form was large 
and loosely jointed, his height decidedly over six feet ; but he lost 
the benefit of his stature by his gait. His countenance was broad, 
and blanched in hue ; but its expression lighted up on presentation 
of any idea which stirred his manifold sympathies in a way which 
encouraged all who knew him highly to value this token of his 
esteem. This diffusive smile of Dr. Garfoyle’s changed the whole 
aspect of his countenance, as a burst of shimmering, penetrating 
sunlight irradiates all the level landscape on a hazy day in the 
Fen lands. 

Terence Garfoyle must not, however, be represented merely as 
a man of somewhat unusual, or even grotesque, appearance, who 
chanced to be vicar of an obscure parish in the poorest part of the 
town. That he was Vicar of St. Amwell’s at all was due not to his 
circumstances but to his conscience, which ever active mentor had 
led him to relinquish the posts of tutor and dean of his college in 
order that he might the more uninterruptedly devote his untiring 
energies to the service of his poorer neighbors. His remarkable 
powers found their exercise in a hand-to-hand tussle with the 
darker problems of society as he met them unclothed and ready for 
him at his vicarage gates. 


2 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


In describing him as Vicar of St. Amvvell’s, that designation 
has been preferred which he himself would have adopted ; as 
a matter of fact, he was the “ Burnett Professor of Patristic 
Divinity ” in the university of which he was a distinguished 
member, and further he was known as a Canon of St. Ives. For 
the last three years, ever since a Liberal ministry was in, he was 
moreover frequently mentioned as a man likely to be thought of 
in any possible vacancy for a bishopric. The idea was in the air : 
a seed of thought blown by the breath of friendly opinion far 
beyond the range of his own short-sighted eyes : for no humbler, 
less ambitious man ever trod the steps of the divinity schools or 
mounted the pulpit of St. Mary’s when it was his turn to preach 
on Sundays. 

In early days, when he was just beginning life upon his own 
account as a promising young doctor, fresh from a London hospi- 
tal, Terence Garfoyle had had a serious attachment to a young 
lady who changed her mind about him ; and in consequence, he 
being of a steadfast nature, her conduct had affected his whole 
subsequent career. There were aggravating circumstances in the 
affair which reduced the young fellow to depths of self-abasement, 
and when he again rose to the surface, after the tempest wherein 
his hopes had been shipwrecked, it was to relinquish the direct 
profession of medicine. The same state of mind which formerly 
sent men into a monastery converted Terence Garfoyle ■ into a 
priest, with views as to the celibacy of the clergy. Yet his fond- 
ness for the science of medicine, even after he had given up its 
direct practice, was of the greatest service in his new calling to 
those to whom he thus doubly ministered. He did not, indeed, 
regard one profession as superior in itself to the other ; but he 
acted in obedience to an irresistible conviction in claiming his 
right to traffic with the least material view of his fellow-creatures. 
He was fifty years of age now, and he had never married. 

Dinner was an early and monotonous meal in Dr. Garfoyle’s 
vicarage ; and both the company and the surroundings were held 
by many to be unworthy of the vicar. The very table was meagre ; 
long and narrow, and of unpainted boards, it had been picked up at 
a sale of a temperance club, together with the benches which sur- 
rounded it. These were occupied on a day early in the October 


AN INTRODUCTION 


3 


terra sorae years back by the vicar, his curates, students, house- 
keeper, and district nurse. 

The students were learning parish work, and, being quite too 
poor to pay their expenses, found themselves members of the mis- 
cellaneous party established in the vicarage. Had they been 
wealthy, they might have gone elsewhere: plenty of training- 
grounds would have been open to them ; as it was, they were im- 
pecunious, almost penniless, so they sat at Dr. Garfoyle’s table and 
shared the vicarage mutton with the curates, the two women, and 
last and least of all with Shadrach Trupper, the housekeeper’s eight- 
year-old son. 

Mrs. Trupper was a depressed-looking woman of middle age ; 
she never took the liberty of looking up during meals save to 
reprove her son for acts below what she considered the dignity of 
the situation. She was a widow of no means ; povert}^ might with 
certainty be predicated of every chosen inmate of that house. 

Mr. Trupper had failed in farming. It had been a very small 
farm indeed, in the eastern counties, just on the border of the Fen- 
lands, where everybody failed together in the first unpleasant and 
still remembered days of agricultural depression. While every- 
body was still astonished at it, when there was a mild sort of panic 
about it, it overtook and swallowed up Shadrach Trupper, senior. 
His lands were poor and his wits were small ; the crisis was a big 
thing, and he was only an insignificant man; he made no stand at 
all, but succumbed with astonishing rapidity. His nerve gave way 
at the outset ; he possessed courage of a certain sort, it is true, but 
only that which proceeds from lack of imaginative resource ; 
accordingly, for want of any better notion, he went and securely 
hanged himself one foggy Monday morning in the least dilapidated 
of his rotten barns. Mrs. Trupper might have saved his life by the 
exercise of a little imagination on her part, for she arrived upon 
the spot with his earliest struggles ; but, presence of mind not 
being her strong point, she departed to scream for assistance, no 
longer needed when it arrived. Hence she was left in a condition 
to b^e provided for by Dr. Garfoyle as housekeeper at his charitable 
vicarage, where she had now been established for five years with 
her son. Shadrach was a ruddy boy who seemed to have absorbed 
his mother’s vitality. While she glanced rapidly round the table 


4 


THE HUSBAND OP ONE WIPE 


with one eye at a time — she had an error of refraction in her eyes — 
and seemed to feel that she was taking a liberty in venturing to 
deprive someone else of the food, he stared boldly at the rest of 
the party, and was only withheld from chattering to Dr. Garfoyle 
himself by his mother’s continual efforts beneath the table. 

The meal was a very silent affair. The curates exchanged a few 
low-toned syllables, mostly on parish matters ; the students, who 
could make noise enough when they chose, stood in awe of Dr. 
Garfoyle ; the district nurse considered her cases. Dr. Garfoyle 
himself ate but little ; he was going to dine out that evening at a 
very different dinner-table to that at which he now presided, and 
being pressed for time he read his letters while the others con- 
sumed their common fare. One of these documents chiefly absorbed 
his attention. It was from his old and tried friend Mrs. Bratton- 
Fleming, and he wished that it had not been written. Its object 
was to bespeak his interest on behalf of a young sister-in-law of the 
writer’s, the widow of her youngest brother, Frank Goldenour. 

Victoria Goldenour had. Dr. Garfoyle learned as he perused the 
confiding epistle, entered the writer’s family at the age of nineteen 
by marriage with her brother Captain Goldenour, when his regi- 
ment was quartered in India, an arrangement which Mrs. Bratton- 
Fleming confessed was “ a great trial to the family ” ; for the 
young lady was possessed of few recommendations save that of her 
own beauty. She had no fortune, and her family had come to 
grief in Australia. 

“ But when he brought her home to England — oh, my dear Dr. 
Garfoyle,” the narrator wrote, “ we all began at once to forgive 
her everything, even when we most disapproved of her. A dozen 
times a day we hated her, and yet between whiles we adored her 
almost as much as poor Frank did himself. It is quite impossible 
for me to describe to you, old bachelor as you are, wherein lay her 
singular power ; I can only say, generally, in her loveliness and in 
her unexpectedness. You must go and call upon her, for she has 
taken lodgings in Cambridge, and then perhaps you too will feel 
the force of what I sa^^ about her. Now pray go, to please me, and 
also because it will be doing her a service. I declare to you that, 
middle-aged woman as I am, I have wept when I have offended 
Victoria, although I have probably said less than I felt it my duty 


AN INTRODUCTION 


5 


to say ; for really since poor Frank has been gone, she has been more 
‘ accentuated ’ than ever. Perhaps you remember the occurrence ? 
He was killed at her feet, you know, on the Underground Railway, 
when she had been shopping in town. Poor fellow ! he had to get 
her and the child and the nurse and a heap of her packages into the 
carriage, and you know how they go off at once. It’s impossible to 
say how it happened now, but it was clear enough at the time : he 
slipped between the carriage and the platform, the train got into 
motion and crushed him. He died in twenty minutes, on the wait- 
ing-room sofa. The child saw it all. His nerves have never 
recovered the shock. He is a beautiful boy, but terribly delicate. 
You who are so fond of children will be won by him. Victoria’s 
habits are luxurious ; my poor brother had had hard work enough 
to keep her; he had been quite unable to provide for her after his 
death, which, as he was such a young man, might have been sup- 
posed to be far enough off ; the two families have had to combine 
to provide her with a decent income. We pay it quarterly, but 
she always exceeds it. At the present moment she must be deeply 
in debt, and we cannot conceive what has taken her to Cambridge. 
Would you please call upon her, and give her the countenance of 
your weighty and influential presence ? She is sure to attract 
attention, especially in a university town, and wise friends are far 
to seek. You will find it hard to associate her with the idea of this 
tragedy, but Victoria is not devoid of feeling ; only she can’t help 
looking happ3\ No doubt there is as much real feeling possible 
beneath pretty hats as beneath the most conventional costume 
of woe ; moreover, it is actually three years ago since poor 
Frank died. However, I frankly confess it is impossible to 
analyze her. Please befriend her if you can make time to 
do so.” 

So wrote Dr. Garfoyle’s esteemed correspondent. He thrust the 
letter into his pocket with a feeling of annoyance which it demanded 
the strenuous habit of self-discipline to control. What might have 
suggested itself as a pleasure to some men took the shape of a dis- 
agreeable task to him ; as a duty, then, let it be done. He would 
call upon Mrs. Victoria Goldenour at his earliest available half- 
hour of leisure. He consulted his memoranda for a free afternoon- 
hour, and found one on the following Friday. This was Tuesday. 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


He noted the engagement thus in his book, “ V. G. X 4.30. 
Friday which needs explanation perhaps, and shall have it. 

At the school to which Terence Garfoyle had been sent as a 
boy, they always wliipped the lads on Friday for all the offences 
committed during the rest of the week. Hence the association of 
Friday with the performance of penitential acts had been early 
rooted in the vicar’s mind, and as a disagreeable duty the visit to 
Mrs. Goldenour went down among the crosses to be cheerfully 
accepted on the following Friday. Having decided this, he 
endeavored to dismiss the subject from his otherwise pre-occupied 
thoughts. Shadrach Trupper always sat by his side at table. Dr. 
Garfoyle was fond of the boy ; indeed, the fondness of this soli- 
tary man for children was in itself remarkable. The dull dinner 
had drawn out its wearisome length. 

“ Why is Shadrach so subdued to-day ?” Dr. Garfoyle asked of 
the mother. 

The child hung his head, and looked at his depressing parent 
sideways. 

Because he has done something wrong, sir, I regret to say,” 
she replied. “ He has been into the attic, and has seen the poor 
creature there, though I expressly bade him not to go ; and what 
with conscience, and concern at what he saw, he has not been him- 
self ever since.” 

All eyes at the table were fixed upon the unlucky boy. 

“Well, the sin has brought its own punishment,” observed the 
vicar calmly, “ so we will say no more about it.” 

“ But I am concerned about the poor pig-boy,” said Shadrach, 
flushing hotly. 

“More than one of us is concerned about that problem,” said the 
junior curate ; “ but as for you, Shadrach, my boy, climb up upon 
my shoulders and let us hear you sing the Latin grace I taught 
you. Shut your eyes, and remember what you’re going to be.” 

“ A chorister,” said the boy ; and, in a strong, true voice, with 
notes vibrantly rich and clear, he sang while the little company 
waited and listened. Then Dr. Garfoyle turned to consult the 
“ Orders for the Day,” which hung suspended on the wall. 

“ The funeral is fixed for half-past two,” said the senior curate ; 
“ do you wish us all to attend ?” 


AN INTRODUCTION 


1 


“ Certainly ; and you too, Mrs. Trupper, if you please,” answered 
the vicar. “ It is the privilege of the widows of the parish to 
support each other.” 

Mrs. Trupper sighed deeply, and acquiesced. 

‘‘ She has had too many funerals to agree with her,” remarked 
one of the divinity students,, as the party separated. 

‘‘ If only she would not fix her eye upon me all dinner-time,” 
observed another of the young men. 

“ Upon you ? Nonsense ! I can swear she never took it off me 
till the pudding disappeared,” said the other. 

‘‘ She won’t wear glasses because she thinks it would be taking a 
liberty to presume to look anyone straight in the face,” said the 
first youth. 

“ I don’t wonder Shadrach senior preferred hanging to having 
her eye always upon him,” said the other. 

Meanwhile Dr. Garfoyle, having caught the person of whom they 
spoke in the hall, informed her that he dined out that evening. 

“ In that case, sir,” she said, “ may I take an hour to go and see 
my sister ? Pye is her name, sir, Mrs. Emma Pye, and she has 
come to Cambridge in attendance on a lady and a little boy. 
Goldenour is the name of her employer, sir. It’s a great thing for 
me to see her, sir ; we have not met for many years. The lady is 
the widow of a captain in the army, who was killed ; like Mr. 
Trupper, only not just similarly.” 

“ Nothing but widows,” groaned the students, overhearing the 
conversation from the dining-room. “ Ugh ! Boiled mutton and 
funerals ! Tragedies and problems ! Black stuff gowns, with 
nurses’ caps, widows’ weeds, and Greek Testament ! Cheerful 
truly ! The road to hell is paved with good works and no 
mistake ! ” 

‘‘ You forget there’s no such place nowadays,” said his com- 
panion. 

“ The doctor’s going to dine out to-night. It won’t be like this 
there. Silks and satins. Flowers and scents. No idiots, paralyt- 
ics, nor consumptives visible. When I’ve lived half a century 
I’ll dine out every night. Now for the funeral. Here goes ! ” 

The funeral was that of a young man who had died of small-pox, 
in a crowded cottage. The wife had refused to permit the removal 


8 


THE HUSBAND OP ONE WIFE 


of the body to the parish mortuary, so Dr. Garfoyle had had the 
coffin placed upon the table in a class-room adjoining the vicarage ; 
the room had been prepared as a mortuary chapel, and the pro- 
cession was to start from thence. He headed it himself. Here he 
was entirely sympathetic : the consistent attitude of misery never 
failed to reach his heart, but he resented the association, suggested 
by the letter in his pocket, of vanity, frivolity, and fashion with 
the eternal tragedies of life and death., Yet he could not effectu- 
ally banish the subject. What had he to do with such women as 
this Victoria Goldenour promised to be ? 

Long ago, it was true, he had played his part with a woman, 
perhaps as fair and as false as any ; but he regarded that episode 
in his experience as the price he had paid for his present absolute 
subjugation of passion to purpose, of the senses to intellect. That 
no pulse stirred in him unsanctioned by his higher will was the 
outcome of the old conflict, the purchase of the old pain. Never 
without poignant suffering, however, were those old days recalled 
to his memory, wherein the young Terence Garfoyle had groaned 
in the grip of a thraldom which had emancipated the middle-aged 
man from the bondage of passion. The empire of the priest over 
himself was, in truth, not the slumber of untried forces, nor the 
inactivity of a feeble frame, but the mastery acquired by the 
resolute discipline of years ; so complete now that it seemed to 
become a second nature. Perhaps he himself alone knew that 
there were hours, even yet, wherein young Terence Garfoyle’s 
agony agitated the professor of divinity’s bosom ; or it may have 
been intuitively divined by those of his younger friends, who with 
unerring felicity of instinct not unfrequently consulted him about 
their matrimonial troubles. But the vanity that played with 
passion was abhorrent to him ; more abhorrent even than the 
weakness which, associating itself with what was commonly called 
“ sin,” yet hid in its lurid depths some spark of the divine fire. 

At a little after seven on that same evening Dr. Garfoyle, in 
irreproachable evening clerical attire, rapped loudly at the door of 
his housekeeper’s room, and cried in his genial voice: 

“ Now, Mrs. Trupper, at once if you please. Where is the por- 
ridge for the attic ? Let one of the young girls bring it and the 
apron upstairs immediately.” 


AN INTRODUCTION 


9 


Not as you are, sir, surely,” said the woman in deprecatory 
tones. 

“ At once, if you please, Mrs. Trupper ! And as Shadrach has 
eaten of the forbidden tree of knowledge he had better come 
too.” 

Shortly the three arrived at the door of the attic. Dr. Garfoyle 
first, followed by one of the many maidens instructed in the mys- 
teries of service at the vicarage, and lastly by Shadrach, awe-struck 
and reluctant ; his brown eyes wide with dread, his crimson cheeks 
several shades redder than usual. When the door was opened he 
hung back, hiding himself in the skirts of the girl, who handed the 
dish and spoon and large coarse apron to the vicar. 

‘‘ Come, Shadrach, come, and help me feed the poor, sad boy,” 
said Dr. Garfoyle, pausing on the threshold of the bare garret. 

The girl vanished, and he and the child entered together. 

The room was bare of all furniture and was lighted solely by a 
skylight. On a great heap of clean straw in one corner lay some- 
thing human, enveloped in a rough sack, from which only a head 
protruded, and such a head ! hideous, enormous, brutal ; the head 
of a debased and deformed idiot ; of a creature far below a brute 
in intelligence, utterly devoid of the power even of feeding like 
the very swine. At sight of the repulsive object, young Shadrach 
lifted up his boyish voice and wept loudly. He would have fled, 
but Dr. Garfoyle, who had by this time finished covering his 
clothing with the apron, laid a gentle compelling hand upon his 
shoulder. 

“ See, Shadrach,” he said, “ it is only a very ugly and unfor- 
tunate boy who has never grown up properly. Shall I tell you all 
about him, and then you will not be so inquisitive or frightened 
any more, and perhaps you will learn to come and help me feed 
him, so long as he is here ? He is going away very soon to a great 
hospital, where they will take care of him. You know, Shadrach, 
your mother and I meant you never to see him ; he has not been 
here long, and, if you had been obedient, you would never have 
known there was anyone in the attic at all.” 

“ Araminta told me,” sobbed the boy. “She told me all about 
him ; she said his motlier hated him and she kept him in a pig-sty, 
in a bit of old carpet, all horrid and dirty ; and she wouldn’t give 


10 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


him any food, and she wanted him to die, and he made dreadful 
noises all the nights, and the neighbors heard him howl ; and he 
would have died in another hour, and ’Minta said, ‘ a good job, 
too,’ only you heard of it and had him fetched here in a barrow, 
and she said you washed him yourself because no one else in the 
house would do it, and she had to bring up the bath and the water. 
And she said — oh, a lot more dreadful things that made me want 
to come and see him.” 

All this was uttered in one gabbled and vociferous scale as he 
edged further and further away from the monster. 

Oh, will he come near me ? ” he cried. “ Let me go ! Let me 
go ! I’ve dreamt of it all the nights, and I’m sure I heard it howl ! ” 

“ Be quiet,” said the vicar, as he laid his large hand on the boy’s 
head with gentle force ; while the idiot, moved by an instinct of 
hunger, tried to roll toward the food, but in vain. “ He is per- 
fectly harmless. He cannot hurt you. Come near and hold the 
plate while I feed him. He cannot feed himself, and he makes a 
terrible mess, so I cover myself up like this. That’s it, nearer still. 
He is going aw&y directly they can be ready for him in the asylum, 
but if you want to please me and to make up for your disobedience, 
you will come and help me to feed him every day until he goes. 
There, now you are standing quite steadily, and we shall get on 
twice as fast.” 

The doctor’s influence over the frightened child was evidently 
complete, he grew perfectly still and held the dish firmly. At 
first he caught his breath with gasps each time that the miserable 
object swayed toward him, but soon he asked in a collected voice : 

“ Why did you put him in a sack, sir ? ” 

Because all his limbs are useless and misshapen, and he can 
wear no clothes. It is best to hide him so.” 

“ But is he a real boy like me ? And did God n\ake him, or did 
the devil ? ’Minta said the devil made them when they were like 
this.” 

“ Shadrach,” said the doctor, replying only by a sigh, sing to 
him, and see if it makes any difference.” 

Then Shadrach, relieving his chest by one little last sob, lifted 
up his beautiful voice once more, and in that bare garret sang to 
the human animal, grunting and slobbering over its food, Charles 


AN INTRODUCTION 


11 


Kingsley’s exquisite hymn for children. Stranger application per- 
haps it never had. The evening light fell from the large window 
above his head upon the child’s clear face, echoes from the unceil- 
inged rafters gave back the tones of his lovely voice; Dr. Gar- 
foyle’s repulsive task was sweetened, and the pure and hidden 
meaning of the disgusting and menial act of service found expres- 
sion in the harmony of the child’s sweet song. 

“ Shadrach,” said the doctor, ‘‘remember they brought not only 
bright little boys like you to Jesus when He was down here, but 
creatures such as this, and He touched them and made them new. 
Let us ask Him to make Budge new some day : and meanwhile let 
us feed him and keep him clean while we have him, because it is all 
we can do for him. I have to come and w^ash him and give him 
clean straw every day. I could not ask anyone else to do it.” 

“ But you are the master,” said the child, with awe in his tones. 

“Yes, I am the master, and the chief person in this house; there- 
fore it is I who must serve Budge. You cannot understand that 
yet ; but 3mu shall help me, Shadrach; you shall come and sing to 
me every day, while I wait upon Budge, until they take him away, 
and you shall not talk to Araminta any more about him. You and 
I are going to have a secret between us. Shall we, Shadrach? 
Now I must go, or I shall be late for my dinner-party. Take the 
dish and the spoon quickly back to your mother.” 

Dr. Garfoyle was going to dine in his College Lodge ; which, as 
buildings go, was one of the most beautiful, ancient, and unrestored 
in that university town. The compan}^ met in the large drawing- 
room, which was one of the most interesting features in the vener- 
able pile of buildings. The party, consisting of about thirty per- 
sons, mostly resident members of the university, their wives, and 
daughters, with a careful selection of B. A.’s to match the young 
ladies, had alread}" assembled. Dr. Garfoyle had been delayed, as 
we have seen ; indeed, he had feared to find himself quite the last 
of the expected guests. It was evident, however, that this was not 
the case. 

The clock had already chimed a quarter-past eight ; which was 
very late for the early hours commonly kept in university society. 
The lady of the Lodge was looking anxiously at the door, and was 
ponsulting her husband with covert but impatient glances. That 


12 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


air of expectation and unrest was pervading the whole assembled 
party which comes over even the best-bred society on similar occa- 
sions. Who was being waited for ? Certainly some important 
person, probably a stranger, used to London hours and unaccus- 
tomed to the punctual ways of academic centres. Who could it 
be ? The new M. P. and his wife were there. The Vice-Chan- 
cellor and his party had arrived. The bishop who had preached at 
St. Mary’s on the preceding Sunday was looking affably at Dr. 
Garfoyle. Who could it be ? The suspense did not last long ; Dr. 
Garfoyle had had barely time to grasp the situation before the door 
was again thrown open, and the butler announced ; 

“ Mrs. Goldenour ! ” 


CHAPTER II 
MRS. GOLDENOUR 

Dr. Garfoyle was, as has been confessed, short-sighted ; but, 
as he had immediately preceded the last comer, he found himself 
near enough, when he turned his enquiring e3"es upon the doorway, 
to share the thrill of surprise which agitated the rest of the com- 
pany at sight of the beautiful woman who entered alone. Like the 
rest of the people assembled, he was completdy dazzled by the un- 
expected apparition which greeted his gaze. So this was Mrs. 
Goldenour, this lovely being in robes of softest satin embroidered 
in silver, over which trailed a sort of lace toga — so Dr. Garfoyle 
would, in masculine ignorance, have called it had he been able to 
attempt any description of her investiture. 

As she advanced, with self-possessed air, toward her hostess. Dr. 
Garfoyle felt that here was one of the most perfect figures, as to 
form and coloring, which he had ever beheld. That he was not 
singular in his judgment was evidenced by the sort of ripple of ex- 
citement which moved the rest of the company as this perfectly 
undreamed-of vision greeted their impatient eyes. A momentary 
silence fell upon the room. The buzz of conversation was instan- 
taneously suspended. Life affords so few new sensations of sight. 
Here was one to be made the most of. “ Oh ! and who was she ? ” 


MRS. GOLDENOUR 


13 


No one had ever seen her before. And she came in alone. “ Where 
was her husband?” “ To whom did she belong?” Unspoken 
questions. Tlioughts common to the waiting company. 

But the master’s wife knew perfectly, of course, that this “ showy 
Mrs. Goldeiiour,” was really nobody at all, that she was a quite 
unimportant person, staying in inexpensive lodgings on Parker’s 
Piece. The lady felt that she had been extremely kind to honor 
the introduction which Mrs. Goldenour had brought her by an 
invitation to dinner at all. Tea would have done quite well for 
her. Moreover, she was painfully aware that no less a personage 
than the bishop’s wife had been kept waiting full twenty minutes 
for her dinner by the bad taste of this presumptuous stranger. So 
she barely introduced the wonderful new-comer intelligibly, when 
she requested Dr. Garfoyle to take her down to dinner in their due 
and proper turn. 

The perfect figure drew itself up, and gathered its shining robes 
around it to allow the master of the college to pass by with the 
bishop’s wife upon his arm, and Dr. Garfoyle stood beside her. 

“ Have I committed a social crime ? ” she asked, turning her 
beautiful countenance toward him. ‘‘ What have I done ? What 
is wrong ? ” and, as she spoke, she glanced at the inadequate repre- 
sentation of her own perfections afforded by an antique mirror 
which surmounted the oak wainscot of the room. 

“If you have committed a crime, I am your companion in dis- 
grace,” replied Dr. Garfoyle. “ I, like yourself, was detained ; I 
only got here three minutes before you arrived. I sadly fear that 
we have both kept this distinguished company waiting for their 
feast. Permit me, now is our turn ; ” and he offered her his arm. 

“Now, how did you know that? Do tell me. I’ve been here 
only a fortnight, and I’ve not a notion of your rules of precedence 
or anything else. Are you a very unimportant person ? Is that 
why you are allotted to me ? I am. Why, I went to St. Mary’s 
Church to the university sermon last Sunday. This very bishop 
was preaching, and the whole place was crammed ; so I asked an 
official, or at any rate a man in a gown, where I was to sit. He 
looked at me, choked, and bolted. Then I asked a lady, and she 
said just this, ‘M. A.’s wives?’ I nodded, though I’d not a 
notion what she meant. ‘Count your pews, ten down.’ Now, 


14 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


you are a clergyman, I see, and I should like to know what on 
earth that woman intended ; for when I went ‘ ten down,’ nobody 
seemed to care about having me there. So I just stood in the 
aisle, right up where I was, and — do you know. Canon Garfoyle,” 
she said, glancing at the card before his plate to get his name, 
“ I’ve been a good bit stared at in both hemispheres — Captain 
Goldenour used to think they knew how to stare in Sydney when I 
was a bride — but I’ve never been so riddled in all my life with 
glances as I was while I stood up there in your big church, after 
the bishop had got well under way. At last an old lady poked me 
out a footstool. It wasn’t even clean. And she bade me ‘sit 
down.’ Sit down on it in the aisle, for all the world like a 
chidden child that had no business to look as it did, or to be where 
it was ! ” 

“ And you took it and thanked her ? ” 

“ Who ? I ? I gave it her back so nicely. It was very dusty, 
and my gloves were the worse for touching its ears. I put it back 
under her feet ever so kindly, and I walked out. Come, Canon 
Garfoyle, confess you are terrible respecters of persons over here.” 
And she began to sup her neglected soup. 

While she was so engaged Dr. Garfojde observed her sideways 
as critically as he dared, considering their very close proximity, 
squeezed in side by side at the long and handsome dining-table, 
with only the space allowed them by somewhat narrow antique 
chairs. She certainly was most beautiful. He did not wonder 
that all men stared at her when, according to her own account, she 
had stood up in her proudly disguised consciousness of being 
something unusual in the crowded church during the service. She 
was so perfect in form and figure, her coloring so soft and yet so 
glowing ; she was so harmoniously and artistically attired. This 
much he at once saw and felt, and that he was not singular in the 
effect she produced upon him was evident ; for, when he had time 
to glance round the magnificently spread board, it struck him that, 
so far as his spectacles allowed him to judge, eveiy man present 
was perceptibly aware of Mrs. Goldenour’s presence, the only 
exceptions being perhaps one or two aged or greedy dons. 

She seemed to have produced a sudden fall in the values of all 
the other ladies present. If one woman could look as she did, 


MRS. GOLDENOUR 


15 


why must all the others look as they did ? It was as though some 
being from another plane of perfection altogether had appeared in 
their midst to confound them. Until she entered, the older ladies 
had passed muster well enough as suitably attired persons in their 
best gowns ; and their daughters had looked fresh and fair, as good 
and happy English girls should look in pretty frocks. But this 
woman in her wonderfully considered toilet belonged to a different 
order altogether. She raised the standard of feminine perfection 
to a height unattainable by any others present. By her side the 
older ladies looked ill-dressed and vulgar, and the younger ones 
commonplace. She occupied a first class alone ; sundry examiners 
present created it for her upon the spot. These were capable of 
stating their conviction in terms ; but Dr. Garfoyle’s nature was 
too chivalrous to permit him to criticise any woman disparagingly, 
from his housekeeper upward ; still he felt what he was not pre- 
pared to own. 

So this was Mrs. Bratton-Fleming’s ‘‘ family affliction,” this 
brilliant colonial lady sitting by his side sipping her champagne. 
Dr. Garfoyle was an ardent teetotaler, of course. His friend’s 
letter concerning the lady lay even now in his coat-pocket, so close 
to her chair that he wished he had left it in his morning coat 
when he dressed for dinner. It made him even anxious lest in 
drawing out his handkerchief he should inadvertently toss it into 
her lap, amid her shining silks and laces. But being a man of 
undisturbed presence, and one accustomed to control and never to 
succumb to situations, he showed no sign of embarrassment when 
his neighbor, turning her beautiful gray eyes upon his broad 
countenance, said with a charming smile : 

“ Do you know it’s quite queer that you should take me in to 
dinner. Canon Garfojde, for I’ve been hearing nothing but your 
praises all the afternoon till, to tell the truth — as I always do— 
I grew rather tired of you, and I felt inclined to say to myself, 
‘ Well, he isn’t all the university anyway, if he is a medical man, 
an ideal vicar, a real canon, and a divinity professor ! ’ Do they 
let one man get everything up here? Are there no consolation 
stakes? You see I’m poor myself, and so I feel for the poor, and 
I object to you on principle ! As I told you while his lordship, 
hidden by that sumptuous piece of plate up there, was preaching 


16 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


to the university, I was invited to take a seat under or upon a 
footstool. And in that solemn moment, do you know, I registered 
a dear little vow, if ever I was a bishop’s wife myself, — I may be, 
you know, stranger things than that have happened, — then and not 
before would I sit upon a footstool in the aisle.” 

Dr. Garfoyle, for answer, glanced at her rich dress and at the 
diamond stars which flashed in her warm brown hair, and smiled. 
It was a kindly commentary upon her boast of poverty; a benign, 
fatherly criticism impossible to misunderstand or resent. This 
was the lady who, he had been told, had a meagre allowance of 
three hundred a year doled out to her by her deceased husband’s 
family and by her own. A deeper flush upon her smiling face 
showed that she accepted the implied compliment while rejecting 
the criticism. 

“May I be permitted to ask,” he said courteously, “to whom I 
am indebted for the honor of having been introduced to your 
notice, though I regret that I should all unwittingly have already 
incurred the double reproach of being a successful man and a 
bore ? ” 

She drew the line of a baby frown upon her forehead, considered 
for a second, and then said : 

“Well, I did bring a note of introduction to Mrs. Gruter, the 
wife of the ex-professor, and I did meet Mrs. Keltridge there. 
They certainly mentioned your name, but with due discretion ; 
the person who ran away with your reputation possesses a name 
not to be mentioned at this high and mighty dinner-table. Still, if 
no one is listening, I may dare to confide to you that it was Mrs. 
Pye, my boy’s nurse, she being sister to your Mrs. Trupper. Did 
you know I had a little son — no, how should you ? Such a lovely 
darling, with a skin just like tinted alabaster. Nearly seven years 
old, but so frail and delicate. And you’ve got a housekeeper — you 
see I know all about you — and I heard everything, all about the 
‘ Guild of Widows,’ and the rest of it. Don’t you think you had 
better enroll me ? lam one of them, you know, and I am as poor 
and lonely as the rest.” 

Beneath this pretty chatter Dr. Garfoyle fancied that he detected 
a note of unreality, so he replied gravely: 

“ The ‘ Guild of Widows ’ of which our dependents seem to have 


MRS. GOLDENOUR 


11 


spoken, foolishly perhaps, is but a little company of poor and 
desolate women in my large and poverty-stricken parish. They 
visit the new-made widows and help to console them, they assist in 
the charge of the children and the house until after the funeral, at 
which they attend to lend the support of their presence to the chief 
mourner. They are for the most part worn elderly women who 
have acquired experience in the school of suffering.” 

Mrs. Goldenour listened to all this in silence, then she gave a 
little inward laugh as though some funny tliought had struck her ; 
and if the modern doctrine of “ thought-transference ” be true, it 
was from her mind to his that the memory of St. Paul’s prophecy 
concerning “ the younger widows ” flashed. 

Dr. Garfoyle throttled the thought with a sense of personal con- 
tempt, and turned to her with his calm countenance unmoved ; when 
she said with a quick, almost petulant, change of manner : 

“Because I am not an ugly worn-out woman in a rusty black 
gown, like our respectable Pyes and Truppers, therefore do you 
conclude that I am personally unacquainted with the tragedies of 
life ? Am I not in mourning too ? I have never even worn a 
colored flower since my dear husband died ; ” and as she spoke she 
rearranged a bouquet of pure white orchid blossoms, which nestled 
in her bosom. “ You see, I have not a scrap of color anywhere 
about me, only soft grays and black and white.” 

Nor had she, yet the circumstance did but throw into fuller relief 
the natural hues of her exquisite coloring. A tree full of pale 
apple-bloom, shining gloriously in the full sunshine of a June day, 
might as well have been said to be “ in mourning ” as this fresh 
beauty. 

Dr. Garfoyle was not a man of a morbid turn of mind; but he 
had seen the underside of life too nearly, in its grim materialistic 
representations, to have any taste for heightening the imaginative 
effects of tragic events by dramatic representation ; yet it did 
occur to him to question the possibility of the existence of genuine 
feeling beneath this outspokenness. Moreover, as a mere matter of 
taste, there was something antagonistic to refinement in the incon- 
gruity of Mrs. Goldenour’s allusions, here, in the very midst of this 
festive scene. She should not have spoken of the tragedy of her 
life at all, while careless laughter and the buzz of animated conver- 
2 


18 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


sation were going on all around her. He drew his chair half an 
inch away from hers. It was as far as circumstances permitted 
him to go. 

‘‘ To be as honest with you, Mrs. Goldenour,” he said, as you 
have been with me, I must confess that I also have been hearing of 
you this very afternoon from your sister-in-law, and my former 
friend, Mrs. Bratton-Fleming. In fact, in accordance with a sug- 
gestion contained in her letter, I had promised myself the honor of 
calling upon you. If you were disposed to receive me, I should 
now be doubly eager to avail myself of your permission to do so.” 

The fact that he had put down this very call as a cross to be 
taken up on a Friday somewhat embarrassed Dr. Garfoyle in the 
delivery of his speech — so difficult is it even for professors of 
divinity to keep a perfectly untripping tongue in ladies’ society ; 
as a consequence, he did not immediately notice its effect upon 
Mrs. Goldenour ; but when, in the pause which should have been 
filled by her acceptance of his suggestion, no response came, he 
looked quickly at his fair neighbor for her answer, and saw no 
simulated, but a very real shade of displeasure upon her hitherto 
smiling countenance. It was quite clear that the lady was annoyed 
or offended. But Dr. Garfoyle had too little egoism to be easily 
discouraged by fancies. He gave her a few seconds in which to 
recover herself, and then he repeated quietly : 

“ May I then take it for granted that I have your permission to 
pay my respects to you at your lodgings, and perhaps you will then 
introduce me to your little son ? I am a great lover of children.” 

‘‘I don’t suppose I shall be at home,” she said with rude brevity : 
‘‘lam always out in the afternoons. I have everything to see. 
One comes to a university town to stare at buildings, and to take 
tea in men’s rooms ; besides, I am here with a view to the October 
meeting. I have friends who are going to drive me to the heath. 
Still, you can of course come if you choose. I will tell Mrs. Pye 
to show you the boy.” 

With this deliberate piece of impertinence Mrs. Goldenour, as 
though utterly weary of Dr. Garfoyle and of his conversation, 
turned to the man on the other side of her, and devoted herself to 
getting up a flirtation with him during the rest of the dinner. 
And yet there had surely been a pathetic undertone even in her 


MRS. GOLDENOUR 


19 


lightest speech, which, Dr. Garfoyle felt, went to the deepest lieart 
of the listener. To say that he was not disconcerted by the inex- 
plicable change in her manner would be to say that he was more 
than human. Even a saint has probably nerves still capable of 
quivering at the touch of mortified self-love ; and Dr. Garfoyle 
was by nature a sensitive man. Moreover, he was a gentleman to 
his heart’s core, and it jarred upon his sense of fitness that any 
woman with pretensions to occupy a prominent place in society 
should permit herself the solecisms of speech and manner which 
this original stranger seemed to delight in. It was obvious that 
she said too much, that in her desire to be the cynosure of all ej'^es 
present, she used her gifts to attract attention; moreover. Dr. 
Garfoyle’s taste suggested that she should have expressed her sense 
of the importance of his position by the inflections of her voice 
and not by calling him “Canon” at the end of five minutes’ 
acquaintance ; and yet were not her faults probably those of one 
brought up in the midst of a less rigid society ? So argued the 
insular mind of the man, now left to the undisturbed consideration 
of his dinner by the withdrawal of her countenance. 

The dining-table was indisputably handsome, the service was 
perfect, the appointments were irreproachable. The master of the 
college sat at the end of the board with the bishop’s wife on his 
right hand, and the pictures of his predecessors looking down upon 
him from the walls ; but this meal as a meal was as much to Dr. 
Garfoyle, and no more, than the midday repast shared with the 
curates and the housekeeper in the bare vicarage dining-room had 
been. These things lent no added zest to his enjoyment. As a 
man of position he was used to these luxurious repasts ; but any 
added warmth which his disciplined nature gained was always due 
to the excitation of moral indignation or of sympathetic admiration, 
never to the mere prompting of appetite. Hence he was glad when 
the affair was over, and the gentlemen could join the ladies in the 
long drawing-room. Thej?^ found the hostess, with her most digni- 
fied friends about her, seated in a circle round the large old-fash- 
ioned fireplace ; the younger ladies occupying the embrasures of the 
window, or standing about in groups ; one only was perfectly soli- 
tary, and that one Dr. Garfoyle’s late companion at table. 

Victoria Goldenour sat by herself at the upper end of the room, 


20 


THE HUSBAND OE ONE WIFE 


on a sort of raised dais, exalted but remote ; she had taken posses- 
sion of a Louis XV. chair, and with her feet on a footstool to match, 
she looked like a veritable queen in her isolation. 

The bishop immediately engaged Dr. Garfoyle’s attention in 
pursuance of a conversation inaugurated below ; but half an hour 
later, when the diocesan discussion was cut short by the necessity 
of taking leave of the hostess, in accordance with the early cus- 
toms of university society. Dr. Garfoyle noted the fact that Mrs. 
Goldenour’s throne was surrounded by every unappropriated man 
in the room ; and that, so long as she would hold her court, her 
admirers were evidently likely to remain unmoved by any intention 
to depart. 

Through the deserted courts, over the picturesque bridge, by the 
narrow streets of the town, Dr. Garfoyle returned to his own 
vicarage, retaining all the way, as a beautiful picture, but as 
nothing more, the memory of the lovely woman seated in the 
antique chair, with a group of admiring men around her impro- 
vised throne. 

It was early yet ; by half-past eleven he had got into an old coat, 
had aroused one of the students from a comfortable nap on the 
sofa, and had set him to work, to construe Greek. An hour later 
sleep conquered the young fellow. Tlmn Dr. Garfoyle took a 
candle and went upstairs. Passing the first floor, which he reserved 
for his own use and that of liis two curates, he paused at a door on 
the second landing. A discordant voice reached him of one shout- 
ing rather than speaking in harsh discordant tones — “ Out of the 
depths have I cried unto Thee ! . . . Lord, hear my voice ! ” 
“This is your hour and the power of darkness.” Tliese and other 
similar sentences were uttered over and over again, mingled with 
inarticulate utterances and what might be described as “ howls of 
lamentation.” 

Dr. Garfojde entered the room and approached the bed on which 
lay an old and singularly repulsive looking object, a woman para- 
lyzed, blind, and of late deaf also. Disqualified by this complica- 
tion of maladies for admission into any special asylum, her pre- 
eminence in misfortune had procured her the privilege of being 
held worthy to be cared for by Dr. Garfoyle himself. Now he 
stood silently by the bed and waited, lest he should break in upon 


MRS. GOLDENOUR 


21 


what was to her a silence wherein her solitary soul communed 
secretly with its Maker ; but the old woman instantly paused. 

“ Lor’, vicar,” she said, in harsh guttural tones, “ how lovely 
sweet yer do smell ! Whatever company have yer been keeping? 
It’s the smell of foreign climes and of spices divine. Come a- 
nigher and shift the pillows, do. Nurse, she have been in ; but she 
have not the gift the Lord has given to you for the making of 
crooked places straight and smooth ; and she allays reeks of drugs, 
she do ; and of ’orrid lime.” (She meant chloride of lime.) “But 
you come to me anointed with dews of Hermon and the scent of 
flowers on this weary night.” 

With careful and scientific precision Dr. Garfoyle arranged the 
bed-clothes and smoothed the pillows, using the highly trained 
skill acquired long ago in his hospital practice. Unlike most deaf 
people, Mrs. Pettit’s sense of taste and smell had become acuter, 
while that of hearing diminished until it was altogether lost. It 
was characteristic of the man that he was gratified at this fancied 
association of extravagance with penury. That his lovely neigh- 
bor at the Lodge table should all unwittingly have been compelled 
by his agency to lay her fragrant tribute at the shrine of misery, 
pleased his fancy. That Mrs. Goldenour’s luxurious expenditure 
should purchase the innocent pleasure of this bedridden creature, 
and that he should be the link of connection between the two, 
seemed to him a happily suggestive arrangement of circumstances. 
Useless to address the old woman — she would not have heard him — 
he put into her hand the handkerchief which Jiad lain in his pocket 
pressed against Mrs. Goldenour’s perfumed draperies, that she 
might retain as long as possible the only pleasure of the senses yet 
left to her; then he extended his hands in silent benediction over 
her, and left her in a state of ecstatic bliss, as compared with her 
previous condition. 

“ Birmingham,” he said, first knocking at and then opening the 
next door, “ it is late. I cannot stop long with you to-night.” 

“ Then why knock, vicar ? ” said a voice, interrupted by a dis- 
tressing cough. “Have I lungs and breath to shout out ‘ Come 
in ’ ? ” 

A cassock lay upon the bed-clothes which covered the wasted 
figure of the man beneath. 


22 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


“ If you could persuade the old sinner in the next room, vicar, 
that the Almighty isn’t quite as deaf as herself, you’d be doing 
me a service, sir,” said the man, in the broken, irritable tones so 
familiar in certain forms of advanced phthisis. ‘‘As soon as I get 
about again,” he continued, “ I shall be thankful to liear the last of 
her sins. She’s forever howling them out and deluding herself 
with the belief that she’s whispering them in confession. I’d have 
more peace in a hospital, and better attendance too. That nurse 
has forgotten my syrup to-night.” 

“ Do you wish me to procure your admittance into the hospital 
for incurables, Birmingham ? I am quite ready to do so. It is 
the only one at which you can be received, as I have already told 
you.” 

“Incurables ! And what may you mean by that. Dr. Garfoyle ? 
Because a man is laid aside from the service of the church for a 
few weeks ; because he cannot turn out early and late, before six, 
on these cold raw mornings, to have that damp church ready for 
your early celebrations, and after eight on reeking wet evenings 
for your communicants’ lectures and what not, therefore you pro- 
pose to cut him adrift, and cast him off. Are not they that have 
served the altar to be supported by the altar ? That is what I 
should like to know ! ‘ Incurable,’ me ! ‘ Hospital,’ me ! Why, I 

shall see out the man you’ve got as verger now. Wretched substi- 
tute the fellow is ! no appearance, no style, not fit for the office, 
quite unsuited for a servant of the sanctuary ! ” 

Here he was interrupted by a spasmodic fit of coughing. 

Dr. Garfoyle w^ent to the washstand, and pouring out the syrup 
handed him the glass. As soon as the man had recovered breath 
to speak at all, he continued : 

“And I must ask you, vicar, to speak to the housekeeper to send 
me up another girl to serve my room, and not that pert jade 
Araminta ; she minces over the floor and wags her head for all the 
world like a fly on the ceiling, and when I asked her for a drink of 
water she’d the nerve to bring it in a bedroom glass ; I require a 
cut-glass tumbler from the pantry, and a siphon by my side, as I 
need not tell you. Dr. Garfoyle.” 

“ You are too particular, my friend,” said the doctor kindly. 

But the invalid, unheeding, continued his complaints. 


MRS. GOLDENOUR 


23 


“ And when you lay aside your weekday cassock as you should 
do now, sir, and take your best for daily use — it was getting 
rubbed when I w;as taken ill, and in the present verger’s hands 
must now be quite worn out — I’d be obliged to you. Dr. Garfoyle, 
to give your express orders that it should be brought up here to 
me. Being silk, it would be warmer for my wear when I do sit up 
a little ; my alpaca’s getting thin. I shiver in it, vicar, and that is 
a fact. I’m perished with the cold. I shall catch my death out of 
that cassock there.” 

“ Well, my friend, and where is the warm dressing-gown I sent 
you from my own wardrobe ? ” 

“A dressing-gown, sir, such as you directed the nurse to bring 
me, might be suitable enough for an invalid ; but I like to be 
dressed as I have always been, ready for the performance of my 
professional duties. I have never yet, sir, consented, you remem- 
ber, to relinquish the duties of my office, nor shall I, sir, unless it is 
your deliberate wish to depose me. You’ve the power to do so, I 
believe ; the power and the right if you choose to exercise it ; if 
not, I intend to resume my post at Christmas.” 

“ As a doctor of medicine, Birmingham, I think it only right 
and wise to inform you that I doubt your being able to resume 
your work as you anticipate ; but meanwhile you are well housed, 
well fed, and well nursed, and must try to show yourself contented 
with what is done for you. Now I must wish you good-night.” 

“ Contented ! Curse him ! ” muttered the consumptive man, as 
Dr. Garfoyle closed the door. ‘‘ Does he dare to come in here per- 
fumed with essences, and gorged with dainties from his carnal and 
luxurious feasts, to insult me, and to gloat over me in my abase- 
ment ! Curse him, in the church and out of it ! May he never 

know the joys of home, nor the love of wife or child ! May ” 

but a violent fit of coughing cut short his maledictions, and when at 
length it was over the ex-verger fell back upon his pillow, an ex- 
hausted, almost an expiring man. 


24 


THE HUSBAND OP ONE WIFE 


CHAPTER III 

HER SON 

Friday being the day appointed for crosses, Dr. Garfoyle saw 
no reason to relinquish his intention of calling upon Mrs. Goldenour. 
The less acceptable his visit might be, the better the discipline for 
the day. 

Accordingly, at the precise time noted in his memorandum book, 
he presented himself at the house indicated. He weakly hoped 
that the lady might be out ; such, however, appeared not to be the 
case. He was ushered up the dingy stairs into a drawing-room 
which he already knew, a married curate having occupied it recently 
for six months. The foundation facts of the room were familiar 
enough to Dr. Garfoyle, but he scarcely recognized it now, such a 
change had passed upon it. Everything ugly, vulgar, and cheap 
had disappeared. Flowers, books, lounges, pictures, screens, 
cushions, draperies, all were of another order to any which had 
graced that commonplace apartment before. The room announced 
the occupation no longer of people on a dull level of respectability, 
but represented the tastes of a Avonian of luxurious habits and of 
dainty feeling. Rose-colored curtains had replaced the dirty white 
ones common to the house, and in the warm atmosphere of the 
shaded room that subtle perfume which had intoxicated the blind 
paralytic’s senses palpably floated and mingled with the breath of 
flowers. But the total effect was displeasing to Dr. Garfoyle’s 
taste. 

Mrs. Goldenour evidently intended to keep her visitor waiting. 
She was dressing herself up, he concluded. He consulted his 
watch once or twice, but without any impatience. His next engage- 
ment was at a fixed hour, and his call upon this lady would be 
regulated not by her caprice or convenience, but by the exigencies 
of a divinity lecture to be delivered at a quarter-past five to a class 


HER SON 


25 


of expectant students. He would give Mrs. Goldenour just so 
much of his time whether she kept him waiting or not, whether she 
were civil or the reverse. As a busy man he had always time for 
everything he undertook to do at all ; but then it was secured by 
not allowing one engagement to override another. 

At length the door opened, and a middle-aged woman entered, 
gently pushing before her a delicate fair-haired boy. This was 
Mrs. Pye to a certainty, and she seemed ready to sink into the 
ground from anger and annoyance. 

“ Mrs. Goldenour said I was to tell you she had gone to church,” 
she stammered, making no attempt to disguise the mendacity of 
the excuse. 

Dr. Garfoyle accepted the situation with tact and courtesy. 
He sat down and made acquaintance with the child; as lovely a 
specimen of boyhood as might have been seen. He had a tender 
heart for all children, and this beautiful boy had from the moment 
of their first meeting an irresistible attraction for the solitary man. 

Bruce Goldenour was nearly seven years old. His fair hair lay 
in shining rings upon his broad forehead ; beneath the serenity of 
a noble brow, his blue-gray eyes looked out with the fearlessness 
of utter innocence. There was no mere childish chubbiness, no 
ruddy roundness in the contour of the face ; each feature was 
delicately moulded, the nose, clear and straight in outline, the lips 
modelled with refinement and sensitively curved, the pretty little 
ears set close to the well-shaped head, which proudly bore the 
crown of an intellectual brow. Bruce Goldenour would never have 
been called a picturesque child ; he was something far better : a 
being full of quick thought and gentle feeling, graceful and gifted 
in an unusual degree. His childish soul shone out of the depths of 
his smiling eyes. His easy, winning movements announced the 
guidance of a finely responsive spirit, and gave him power over 
all discerning observers, the greater in that it was wielded with the 
unconscious freedom of youth. There were indeed strange depths 
in the luminous eyes wherein, as in some dark and fathomless sea, 
the memory of the unutterably sad and perfectly inexplicable 
mystery of anguish which his baby eyes had looked upon lay hid- 
den. There was a look in this child’s face which awed the sym- 
pathetic beholder into silent pity, a look expressive of the pleading 


26 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


pathos of the unusually thoughtful nature. He had indeed dreamt 
and brooded over the mystery of death which he had witnessed, 
until the memory of it had sunk into his very soul, weighting his 
unspoken thought with questions to which there could be no 
replies, for his or any other human heart. 

The sight of the boy cast a spell over Dr. Garfoyle’s mind. 
Henceforth he would find it impossible to forget either the mother 
or the child. The image of this perfect candor and serene intelli- 
gence was to haunt his memory like the lovely vision of a dream. 
He to whom all children, for childhood’s sake, were dear ; he who 
individualized even the unattractive urchins who filled his parish 
schools with clamor ; he in whom a singularly tender sense of 
fatherhood, remaining unatrophied by the repression of long years, 
responded to the claim of any child, at the aspect of this little son 
of Mrs. Goldenour’s surrendered his full soul to love and bene- 
diction. 

Bruce was friendly though not communicative, yielding readily 
to Dr. Garfoyle’s persuasive power. He had heard of Shadrach 
Trupper and of his wonderful voice, from the partial account of 
Shadrach’s mother, and he expressed a wish to come and see the 
other boy, whose papa he naturally concluded that he saw before 
him. This innocent mistake caused Mrs. Pye agonies of embarrass- 
ment ; and Dr. Garfoyle, unwilling to prolong the situation, 
produced his card-case and prepared to depart. A rustle outside 
the imperfectly closed door, and a slight sound as of suppressed 
laughter, did not escape his ears as he bade the nurse and child 
good-by; and the door of the adjoining room was unmistakably 
closed as he crossed the landing. He was, however, so very nearly 
indilferent that the fraction of annoyance he experienced might 
well be debited to the score of a Friday. 

Dr. Garfoyle was in very good time for his lecture ; rather too 
early, in fact ; so, as he did not care to sit dumbly facing his 
audience until the quarter struck, he turned into the reading-room 
at the club, and glanced over his notes. His lectures were some of 
the best attended in the university, not only by men of whom 
attendance was required to fit them for taking a degree, but by 
serious men of all standings. Many ladies also were fond of using 
their privilege to put in an appearance. Theology was a subject 


HER SON 


27 


they thought they could understand ; at any rate, they felt it might 
do them good. So Dr. Garfoyle was well used to seeing rows of 
ladies with composed faces gazing more or less intently at him as 
he addressed his class. Glancing up as he commenced his lecture 
this October afternoon, he was, however, distinctly surprised to see, 
in the most conspicuous place which custom permitted her to 
occupy, the very lady who had just refused to receive his civil 
call. 

Mrs. Goldenour had got herself up with a sobriety of costume 
which she probably considered suitable for the occasion ; none the 
less was it impossible for her to look like any ordinary matron 
present ; and the eyes of any man once surprised by a glance at her 
lovely but demure countenance were perpetually turning in that 
direction. 

A vainer man might have been gratified or annoyed by the 
inexplicability of the lady’s conduct ; but Dr. Garfoyle simply 
cared nothing about it. He thought of her, however, as Bruce 
Goldenour’s mother ; and was distinctly less indifferent to her 
than he had been before. He concluded his lecture, shut up his 
note-book, gave her time to depart with the rest of the audience, 
and took his way back to his vicarage. 

To be shortsighted is a drawback not entirely without its com- 
pensating balance in a place where members of the same society 
daily or hourly perambulate a given' and restricted area. Few 
men care to convert their hurried passage to lecture-room or 
library, to hospital, club, or domicile, into a circumstantial progress, 
bowing to right and left to the men and women of their ordinary 
acquaintance. Hence a reputation for being too short-sighted to 
recognize aaybody is not without its decided conveniences in a 
university town. Now without his spectacles this was Dr. Gar- 
foyle’s unassumed position ; with them he could generalize as well 
as anybody. As he had therefore learnt by experience to value 
the advantages of his disadvantages, he carefully refrained, when- 
ever he took his walks abroad, from correcting his infirmity of 
sight by adventitious aid. His spectacles were carefully hidden 
in his pocket when he left the divinity schools. Suddenly a 
thought struck him, and he put them on. 

Yes, he had been none too soon ; there was Mrs. Goldenour 


28 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


walking on a little way ahead of him. She was going quite 
slowly too, as tliough she wished to be overtaken by someone. 
There was something not exactly free, and j^et singularly uncon- 
ventional and elastic about her gait and carriage, which at once 
distinguished her from the ordinary type of Englishwomen by 
which she was surrounded. And it was this complete self-posses- 
sion, this uimsualness of air and manner, which, together with the 
striking outlines of her figure, and the poise of her pretty head, 
rendered her noticeable, even before the impression was confirmed 
by the sight of her face. Moreover, she displayed little char- 
acteristic peculiarities of gesture and manner in society which, once 
noted, fascinated the observer, who caught himself eagerly watch- 
ing for their bewitching repetition. 

Thanks to his spectacles. Dr. Garfoyle did not overtake Mrs. 
Goldenour until by a turn in the road she was lost to sight ; then 
he took a cross-cut and got home in safety, congratulating himself 
as a wise man should do on his presence of mind. But the next 
morning he had occasion to go to the Senate House ; and on his 
return, as he traversed the Newmarket Road, it struck him that 
there was an unusual stir and bustle pervading that somewhat 
dubious locality. Smarter vehicles and swifter horses than he was 
accustomed to see were passing through his dingy parish. He was 
too utterly ignorant of racing matters to remember that it was the 
day of the first October meeting ; but he had just come to the 
slow conclusion that something must be up on the heath, when 
a dashing turn-out of the Newmarket cart order was suddenly 
pulled up in the roadway, and a ringing feminine voice was heard 
exclaiming : 

“ Oh, Dr. Garfoyle, Dr. Garfoyle, pray stop a minute ; you are 
the very person I most wanted to see. Oh, Mr. Pengelley ! won’t 
your horses stand ? I do so want to speak to Dr. Garfoyle ! ” 

To the imperfect vision of the gentleman thus addressed, Mrs. 
Goldenour presented much the appearance of a very animated 
fashion-plate, but when he stepped out into the roadway he recog- 
nized both the lady, the equipage, and the gentleman by whom it 
was driven. 

Mr. John Pengelley was the eldest son of a family, half squires, 
half gentlemen-farmers, who owned a considerable property on the 


HER SON 


29 


Huntingdon side of Cambridgeshire, some miles out of the town. 
And the lady saved him any further trouble by exelaiming : 

“ Have you forgotten me already, Dr. Garfoyle ? Did I not tell 
you at that dignified dinner-party that I was going to make a 
progress through your parish on my way to Newmarket? I do 
not admire what I have seen of it, and I wisli you promotion to 
a bisiiopric at once. Dear me, these horses ! Mr. Pengelley, do 
throw away tliat cigar, and give your mind to keeping them steady 
for one minute more.” 

The man by her side, whose impatience of the delay had cer- 
tainly been communicated to his horses, laughed and signed to the 
groom at their heads to restrain tlie nervous fidgeting of which 
his fair companion complained, and which had undoubtedly been 
provoked by his own unsympathetic manipulation of the reins. 

“ What I wanted to say, Dr. Garfoyle, was only just tiiis : that 
I believe you will find my little boy at play on your lawn, and 
that I hope you will overlook him, if you are not pleased to see 
him. I believe you kindly made acquaintance with him, on the 
day when you honored me with a call, and I was unfortunately 
gone to church.” She said this with a smile which lighted up two 
dimples in her dainty chin. “Bruce begged to go and see that 
boy with a voice and a Bible name ; but pray despatch him and 
Pye home again if they are in anjmne’s way. No, really ! how 
nice of you to have been so taken by the child. One instant, Mr. 
Pengelley. Oh, dear, these horses ! Thanks so much ! I am 
coming to talk to you about that guild soon, you know. Dr. Gar- 
foyle, the one I’m to join. Have you heard from Mrs. Bratton- 
Fleming again ? No ? Neither have I. Do you want to ? I 
don’t ! If you are writing, pray don’t tell them that I’ve gone to 
Newmarket and she waved her hand in a charming adieu. 

All this was uttered in a dozen breaths, while the horses tossed 
their heads and flung the foam-flecks from their bits and fidgeted 
anxiously, incited thereto scientifically by the master of the equi- 
page ; he, with a stolid air of exaggerated courtesy, divided his 
attention between the reins and an expiring cigar, which he had 
removed from his lips in deference to Dr. Garfoyle’s presence at 
their side. The encounter created a good deal of interest in the 
roadway, whence it was watched by curious people standing at 


30 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


their cottage doors, and passing their time by watching the unusual 
traffic. 

“Know her sort !” said one woman to another, as Dr. Garfoyle 
retreated hastily with assurances of welcome for the boy. But the 
other shook her head, and answered as she shut her cottage 
door : 

“ I’d go bail for her, let her be who she may, so long as he 
smiles on her as he did but now.” 

Dr. Garfoyle’s benign countenance did indeed display only 
unruffled serenity as he turned away. The easy assimilation of 
personal annoyances, without display of moral indigestion, he had 
long recognized as an elementary function of self-discipline. As an 
attentive student of human nature and a man of varied experience, 
he was entirely of opinion that although Mrs. Goldenour, A’^oung 
and beautiful and a widow, might be disinclined to govern her con- 
duct by tlie somewhat rigid code of etiquette imposed by circum- 
stances upon the societ}^ in which he had found her, yet that to her 
own standard she was doubtless faithful enough. 

The conventions of a necessarily restricted public opinion might 
well try the patience of a brilliant stranger, accustomed to freer 
states of society. So mused Dr. Garfoyle, as became a wise and 
entirely charitable man. 

The vicarage garden was an oasis in the midst of a dense mass of 
small tenements. It was surrounded and overlooked on two sides 
by miserable houses ; the church stood at an angle to the vicarage, 
separated from it only by a paved yard, upon which four poplars 
stood, together with a copper beech and a luxuriant silver aspen, in 
whose wind-stirred branches sun and shade were one, as in the 
rippling, changing motion of a gentle summer sea. When, soon 
after he took up his abode at the vicarage. Dr. Garfoyle came 
across the poet Blake’s narrative of his vision of angels, seen filling 
a tree on a June day, he felt that it must have been in some such 
tree as this that the inspired boy surprised the secret of the divine 
vitality in the life of nature ; no other tree or plant ever seemed to 
him so indwelt with the vital principle as this, his favorite aspen. 

Opposite the church the eye obtained some relief from the sight 
of squalid dwellings by a long stretch of green, first over a field 
devoted by the present vicar to purposes of parish recreation, then 


HER SON 


31 


over the garden of the workhouse, and the cemetery grounds 
beyond. By heightening the brick walls which surrounded his gar- 
den and held, Dr. Garfoyle might have ensured the privacy of his 
domain, and William Birmingham, the ex-verger and quondam 
custodian of the vicarage grounds, constantly suggested the erec- 
tion of a latticed screen ; but Dr. Garfoyle preferred that the 
women from the cottages opposite should sit at their windows on 
summer evenings and look on at the games of cricket which their 
lads played in the field. He liked to see rows of old people sunning 
themselves on the surrounding benches, and encouraged Shadrach 
to bring in selected children to disport themselves upon the grass. 

In thttse bright autumn days the garden was resplendent with 
old-fashioned flowers ; rows of hollyhocks and dahlias stood under 
the walls, beds of brightly colored plants gladdened the eye, the 
house itself was covered with a luxuriant wealth of creeper with 
crimson leaves and white and j)urple flowers. Around it was a 
raised asphalted path with benches set at intervals ; upon one of 
these benches Dr. Garfoyle had seated himself, picking up a daily 
paper, flung there by one of the curates now engaged in a cheerful 
game of tennis on one of the courts below; and pleasant to his ear 
was the musical sound of childish laughter mingling with the young 
men’s eager shouts. 

Bruce Goldenour and Shadrach Trupper were spinning tops close 
to him, upon the asphalt ; but Dr. Garfoyle knew better than to 
spoil his chances of a closer friendship with the rare boy by solicit- 
ing his acquaintance at once. The man who would make friends 
with any innocent furred or feathered creature, be it bird or even 
insect, must suppress himself, he must look at them only as if he 
saw them not ; must be very patient and very still ; move so much 
as an eyelash, and the frightened bird will fly away ; sit as though 
you have no thought of it and its ways, and it will by degrees 
approach as it becomes convinced that you have no disposition to 
use the powers you possess against it, and in the end it will lay 
aside its armor of fear, and will even betray to you unwittingly the 
secret of its nest, the home of its heart. Everything that is young 
and weak requires of a man that he make himself young and weak 
with it, if he would win it. So Dr. Garfoyle sat behind his paper 
screen and did not at first notice Bruce Goldenour’s presence ; but 


32 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE AVIFE 


lie put his spectacles on, with which he could see as well as anybody, 
and sideways he observed the contrast between the two children. 

Shadrach was a wholesome looking boy ; his cheeks were rosy as 
a Baldwin apple, his head was like a bullet, and his frame was 
stout and strong. His mother called his hair ‘‘fair,” but it was a 
pale brown, and severely tonsured by her scissors ; the other child 
was very pale, but there was nothing sickly in his appearance. 
From his mother he had inherited the transparent hue of the fair 
skin beneath which the blue veins were pencilled like the markings 
upon the petals of the wood-sorrel. Delicate he certainly was, 
but Dr. Garfoyle, observing him professionally, came to the con- 
clusion that the robuster child probably possessed a constitution 
more prone to disease. Bruce’s delicious laughter and untiring 
energy bespoke the activity of a mind upon which conceptions fall- 
ing incessantly like inspirations compelled their expression by the 
ever agile frame. Dr. Garfoyle noted, too, that in their various 
games, where the sturdy boy shrank from laziness or grew inert 
from lack of mental impulse, this child of fragile make showed 
untiring pluck and spirit, together with remarkable fertility of 
resource. 

From time to time scraps of the boys’ conversation reached Dr. 
Garfoyle’s ears as he sat meditating rather than reading in the 
autumn sunlight, and apparently taking no notice of them; boy-like 
they were not aware of the far-reaching compass of their own young 
voices. Shadrach was the chief speaker, and his voice, so lovely in 
song, had a distressing twang of local dialect, which often caused 
his hearers to wish that he were like a bird gifted with the power 
of song, but not kept to talk. The other boy maintained a sensitive 
reserve about his own affairs ; but Shadrach knew nothing of such 
reticence, nor was he in the least awed by the vicar’s presence. 

“He is not my papa,” said Shadrach boastfully. “My papa was 
a very rich man ; he had a splendid, place in the country ; he had 
four horses and a gig and a cart ; and we’d lots of fields and pigs, 
and cows and a calf, and ducks and hens, and eggs and turnips, 
and mother never did any work, only looked after the servants ; 
but Dr. Garfoyle is just the vicar, that’s all. My mother is a lady, 
she only does the housekeeping here to oblige Dr. Garfoyle ; she 
does the cooking, but ’Minta and all the girls do the rest.” 


HER SON 


33 


Bruce paused a minute in his occupations to exclaim : 

“ Who is ’Minta ? ” 

“ The eldest of all the girls. It was her birthday yesterday, and 
nurse gave her a money-box with sixpence in it ‘ to teacli her 
economy.’ ” 

“How would it teach her that ?” asked Bruce. 

“ Oh, I don’t know. I suppose it would do her good without her 
knowing it, like saying your prayers or going to church ; but what 
are you going to be when you are a man ? ” 

“ I am going into the army,” said Bruce, carefully depositing a 
large toad, which he had been caressing, beneath an inverted flower- 
pot. 

“ What army ? The Salvation Army or the Church Army, or 
are you going to be a redcoat ? lam going to be a clergyman, I 
am. Mother saj^s she’ll save up and send me to college ; and then 
when they make Dr. Garfoyle a bishop I shall be vicar choral of 
his cathedral.” 

At this point Dr. Garfoyle read an article on the state of the 
Church in Wales ; when his attention was again aroused he heard 
from the stranger child’s pure intonations: 

“ Oh, no ! my mother says we are quite poor.” 

“ Then did some lady give your mother the things you have on ?” 

“ Shadrach,” interrupted the vicar, “ what have you boys got 
under that flower-pot ? ” 

“ A toad,” said Bruce Goldenour eagerly, bringing it up for 
admiration. “ And I have made him a little ladder of twigs, so 
that he can go out for a walk when he likes. See how beautifully 
yellow he is underneath, if you have got time to look, sir. Your 
garden is so beautiful, may I come here again ? ” 

AYhile Mrs. Trupper’s boy discoursed, out of the shallowness of 
his little vulgar soul, about the domestic arrangements of the 
vicarage, and the characteristics of its numerous inhabitants, and 
related liis own and his mother’s petty ambitions, the other child 
now and then lifted his soft eyes, wherein veiled suggestions of 
questioning thought lurked, and fixed them on the inexpressive 
countenance of his companion, with mild wonder but with no 
response. The boys had nothing in common. Time and space 
could not have separated them more effectually than nature had 
3 


34 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


already done. The one with no awakened life whatever beyond 
the mere material, his song voice alone the only hint of any possible 
awakening into a better ventilated region of feeling being in store 
for him ; the other sensitive, reticent, refined, poetic, with the con- 
scious pulse of pain already throbbing within his childish soul. 

“ This boy,” so Dr. Garfoyle felt, “ a man might love as his own. 
Here was a child to prize and wait for. Surely,” he thought, “ it 
was such a child as this that, centuries ago, the Master took and 
set in the midst of jarring men, that by the mere service of a lovely 
and innocent personality he might heal and uplift their age-worn 
hearts ! ” 

But if Shadrach’s trying utterances were to be taken as faithful 
representations of his poor mother’s low-toned mind, must not the 
charm of the other’s nature be held as in the same measure due to 
the mother who had borne and reared him ? So mused Dr. Gar- 
foyle, and he began sincerely to desire that Mrs. Goldenour might 
keep her promise of calling to enroll herself among the guild of 
widows. 

But a week passed, and she came not. During that week. Dr. 
Garfoyle thought of Mrs. Goldenour and of her bo}^ so constantly 
that he might have been said to be always thinking of them ; their 
existence had already become a foundation fact of his mind. The 
near future always seemed to hold another meeting with them. 


CHAPTER IV 

SOME CONFESSIONS 

It was a pouring wet day, rivers of rain ran down the windows, 
seas of mud filled the streets. It was a day on which to lose heart 
and hope, to despond, to think of one’s debts and one’s sins, to 
take a pessimistic view of life, and to picture heaven as an Eastern 
desert wherein never a drop of water fell. 

Dr. Garfoyle sat at his study table ; he had had an early fire lighted, 
and it smoked; the wood was damp, and drops of rain fell down 
the chimney and sputtered as they touched the feeble flame. He 
was preparing an address for his district visitors’ meeting ; but he 


SOME CONFESSIONS 


35 


felt tlie influence of the weather, and there was not one of the 
whole tlurty upon whom his mind rested witli any sense of 
refreshment, in its present condition. He wondered if the people 
liked their visits as little as he did himself, and thought it even 
probable. 

Suddenly Aramifita hit the door with a vigor which made him 
jump. He cried : 

“ Come in,” and she entered dubiously. 

“A district lady, sir.” 

“ Show her into the class-room then, and ask her to wait. It is 
not time for the meeting, for three-quarters of an hour.” 

“ Please, sir, she says she knows that ; but she wants to speak to 
you about a person in distress before the others come.” 

“Show her in here, then,” he said, resigning himself with a sup- 
pressed sigh. He well knew the persistency of the ordinary dis- 
trict dame. 

She came in, and she was Mrs. Goldenour. 

Dropping the disguise of a waterproof cloak, she stood before 
him, laughing at his surprise ; and she was a conception, a thought, 
a dream in grayj with a wreath of white clirysanthemums bound 
by a velvet bow, and a dusky moth in her bright brown hair. She 
extended both hands with a pretty deprecating gesture ; he took 
them, and she dropped into an easy-chair by the fire, which sud- 
denly sprang up into a brilliant blaze ; she put one dainty little 
foot upon the fender ; he seized the poker and expressed the fer- 
ment of feeling which the apparition stirred in him, by causing a 
prolonged agitation among the coals. 

“Dr. Garfoyle,” she said, “ I intrude. I know Ido. I am so 
penitent ; but I am come to say good-by. I go away to-morrow.” 

He started and dropped the poker with a clatter. She saw her 
advantage and pressed it home. 

“Yes, I am going quite awajq and you can pay your district 
visits, and attend your parish teas, and dine at college lodges, and 
give your learned lectures, and never have to linger lest you over- 
take me. Are you not thankful ? I can see that you are. I have 
been so rude. I have treated you — well, worse than any woman 
ever did before. Say, is it not so? I am sure of it. Did any 
woman in your life ever dare to be so rude to you as I have been ? 


36 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


No, I know you cannot say it, for you never lie politely. Tell me, 
did any woman ever venture long ago, when you were young, to — 
well, to peep through the crevice of a door and laugh, and say she’d 
gone to church, when you were kind enough to call on her? And 
yet, how I know it I can’t saj^, but I am very sure of this, that the 
woman has lived and died who has made you far more miserable 
than it is likely I shall ever do.” 

“ Then why did you do it? ” he asked, more moved than he had 
been for twenty years, by her daring words. 

“ Why did I do it ? Simply this — to think that you did not guess 
at once — well, the best of men are slow ! Because I was foolish 
enough to imagine you capable of playing the spy for Mrs. Bratton- 
Fleming and my husband’s family — because I thought that you 
might write to her, and tell her how I Avent to NeAvmarket Avith Mr. 
John Pengelley and his friends, and hoAV I could not pay my Avay. 
As if j'ou were not quite too big a don to stoop to talk of poor me.” 

“ I have not talked about you, Mrs. Goldenour ; but certainly I 
have thought much of you and your lovely boy -since we last met,” 
Dr. Garfoyle said, melting beneath the influence of her happy, 
easy manner. It Avas impossible to resist Victoria Goldenour Avhen 
she took pains to be accepted. 

“Oh, that dinner-party ! ” she said, settling herself comfortably 
in her chair, and picking up a treatise on “ JeAvish Sanitation” as 
a shield from the fire. “And that old master’s Avife, hoAv on earth 
was I to know that what she said she meant ? Does anyone in 
any other quarter of the world ask you to dinner at a quarter to 
eight, and sit doAAm at seven forty -five ? And that bishop’s Avife ! 
I see her still, with a grass green satin goAvn too tight for her 
portly frame, and a bunch of yelloAv poppies in her faded hair ! 
and, do you knoAV what happened. Dr. Garfoyle, after you were 
gone ? No, of course you don’t ; but you might guess. Do you 
knoAV they couldn’t get rid of me ? I expected the lady of the 
lodge Avould offer to lend me things, and have them shoAV me up to 
bed. Hoav late do you suppose I had ordered my cab ? Why, at 
eleven ! Fancy a decent Avoman out dining alone at a college 
lodge and not back at home by eleven ! Half an hour after every 
soul Avas gone did I sit in that dark room beloAv, Avith a maid and 
a chamber candle ! I did indeed ! I Avas got downstairs. Public 


SOME CONFESSIONS 


37 


opinion squeezed me out above. I was wished good-by to before 
I was gone, I was indeed. Such inhospitable manners I never met 
with before.” 

Dr. Garfoyle regarded her lovely but petulant face with one of 
his most benign smiles. 

“Perhaps,” he said, “ it is as well that you are going awa3^ You 
cannot appreciate our virtues ; and there are, I am quite prepared 
to believe, ways in which we are quite unworthy of you here, though 
we might learn to understand each other better if you stayed. 
Still, of this one thing I am very sure, that we are none of us com- 
pany as good for you as the society of your boy. Permit me to 
express to you my very genuine feeling that any woman has 
enough to live for, without fashionable society, as the mother of 
such a rarely attractive child. And further, I am indeed sure that 
she must have learnt some true and tender lessons in life before 
she could have been consciously instrumental in making him what 
he evidently is.” 

She dropped her tract, folded her delicately gloved hands in her 
lap, and looked up at the broad and candid countenance which 
smiled upon her from the opposite side of the fireplace, with a 
pretty mixture of surprise and awe. 

“ Bruce is indeed beautiful,” she said, while the warm color 
flooded her sweet face, and a soft light shone through tears in her 
gray eyes. “ He is indeed a treasure, but it is to his father that 
he owes his soul; I gave him nothing better than his complexion, 
I am sure. He is indeed my best companion ; night and day he has 
been cherished by me. He has never left me since his father died. 
I have often longed to lay my head upon the ground beneath his 
little feet, simply to pray to him for the healing and benediction 
of his touch ; but the child is so sensitive that I sometimes fear 
lest even my very love should hurt him.” 

“Many a woman’s passion hurts her child,” said Dr. Garfoyle 
thoughtfully ; “ and a widowed mother is so apt to take her lost 
husband’s little son and to pour out at his childish feet all the 
treasures of her empty heart. If she does this, she will surely 
injure and she may, indeed, kill her child.” 

“Shall I confess to you? ’’she said. “They tell me you hear 
many confessions.” 


38 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


‘^But I am not bound to secrecy,” said Dr. Garfoyle, smiling, 
“ when they are spontaneously made to me by my study lire.” 

“No matter, only listen for five minutes more. This is what I 
have come to talk to you about ; you are wise, you are good, you 
are true ; if you have no woman about you it is not because the 
love of women and of little children is foreign to your heart. 
Where did you learn such a discerning affection for a child ? ” 

“From the memory of my own mother,” he said. “She also 
was a widow, and I was her only child. All the things I say to 
you I learned from the wisdom and clearsightedness which dis- 
tinguished her. The widowed mother of an only child must hold 
her son, Mrs. Goldenour, as though she held him not ; her embrace 
must be a force which builds up and upholds the child ; never a 
grasp which makes his tender nature the support of her own weak- 
ness. I tell you that she had better even give him a careless hearty 
blow than pour into his baby soul the bitter rivers of her own 
passion, and sear his childish heart with the scalding tears of her 
own grief. When you feel tempted to act as you say you do at 
times, you must brace yourself up for your boy’s sake ; you must 
give him some light merry word, try some little joke to make him 
laugh, even possibly reprove him briskly for some childish fault.” 

“ Dr. Garfoyle,” she said, her face growing white and her eyes 
intently fixed upon his countenance, her very soul in the words 
that seemed to force themselves from her unwilling lips, “ do you 
know that Bruce saw his father killed ? Think of it ! His little 
garments were dyed all over with his father’s blood ! ” Shudder- 
ing, she hid her face in her hands ! “Ah, I cannot tell you more ! 
Oh, m}^ God — his little face, and those tender hands ; think of it, 
sir ! I washed them white with my tears ! Can any child so 
sensitive have seen what he has seen and live ? And ever since I 
have read the memory of it in his eyes. I have seen it in those 
two sharp lines of pain so unnaturally marked around his baby 
mouth. He will never forget it, and he will die!” 

“ I think not ; with proper care, with right management,” said 
Dr. Garfoyle considerately. 

“ Can you advise me ? Can you help me with the child ? I am 
alone, and I am unable. I have no other aim in life than the 
child’s good. I play, yes, I know I do. I am young, and I amuse 


SOME CONFESSIONS 


39 


myself. I laugh, and people think perhaps I have forgotten all my 
past ; but all the while the passion of fear is tearing at heart, 
coming nearer every day, lest having lost my husband I should lose 
Bruce also. Dr. Garfoyle, I fear it is indeed true that his father’s 
death has killed the child. If you had seen him as he was before, 
you would know that I speak the truth. If I do foolish things 
it is because I would forget ; because I am driven by fear and 
pain.” 

“Is that all ?” he asked gently. 

“ No ! ” she said, suddenly lifting up her head and smiling through 
her tears, “ I will be quite honest with you, for you deserve it. It 
is not all ; I have a passionate love of enjoyment. I was meant to 
enjoy my life. Life itself is good to me, and I would make the 
most of it. I must have my life though as yet I don’t see how. 
Now you know why I sent Bruce here the other day ; I wanted you 
to see him and observe him. I trusted that afterward you would 
advise me, that you might help me with him. I wanted the advice 
of some man who was wise and kind, and I have chosen you. At 
first I thought you the very last man that I should consult, because 
you were Mrs. Bratton-Fleming’s friend ; but I am not a stupid 
woman ; I can see when I have been mistaken, as I was in enter- 
taining such petty thoughts of you. A man in your position has 
something else to do than to waste his time on strangers, and I have 
no claim on you ; only when people speak of you they say that it 
is precisely those who have no claim on you that you are apt to 
make your special care.” 

“ Surely the need is the claim,” said Dr. Garfoyle, moved be- 
yond his wont. But at the same time he heard the district visitors 
beginning to arrive, and knew that his time was limited. “ But 
what can I do for you ?” he asked, under the influence of this im- 
pression. “You have already told me that you leave to-morrow.” 

“ I only go because I cannot stay,” she said ; “ I do not give my 
lodgings up, for the simple reason that I caTinot pay my bill. I am 
ashamed to liave to confess this to you, but if you have heard any- 
thing of my circumstances at all from Mrs. Bratton-Fleming, you 
will have learnt that my dear husband was unable to leave me more 
than an annuity of fifty pounds a year, for which he had insured 
his life ; and that the two families of Goldenour and Bruce make up 


40 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


an allowance of three hundred a year for us between them. The 
child’s grandfather, Sir Peregrine Goldenour, is dead and done for, 
but he had an elder son. Peregrine, who is married, and has a large 
family of boys ; Frank was only the second son, so a hundred and 
fifty a year is all he would do for us. Then, on my side, my parents 
are dead ; my father came to grief in Australia and died a ruined 
man ; but my grandfather. Sir Victor Bruce, is alive and he is 
generous to us now and then. Sometimes he will hear reason, so 
it is to him I am going. He must give me something, if 1 take the 
trouble to go and stay with him at Ealing Hall. But I can’t take 
Bruce with me; Sir Victor is old, and won’t stand children. Yet I 
am not quite happy in leaving him here with Pye. I have never 
parted with him before.” 

‘‘Why not let him come here?” said Dr. Garfojde. “It would 
give me an excellent opportunity of getting to know the child 
better, and I should be more able to advise you with him afterward, 
if I had him under my eye for a short time. Also the sisters are 
anxious to be together for a while — Mrs. Pye and^Trupper, I mean. 
Your boy shall be a precious charge to me. It is not possible for 
me to tell you how strong a feeling I have for little children. It 
is inborn in my nature.” 

“But I know it,” she cried, “ without your telling me, and that 
is why I am here. For years, indeed ever since my dear husband 
died, I have been seeking for someone who would, without being 
only a doctor, regard me simply as the child’s mother and help me 
with the boy. Of late he has grown more nervous than ever, and 
ray fears have increased likewise. I will bring him to you. It is 
just what I should desire. You are a doctor, but j^ou are also a 
lover of children. You are a kind and wise mail, and I am content 
and glad to let him come. But there is one point about which I 
am doubtful, forgive my alluding to it ; must he associate with 
that boy Shadrach ? Could we not draw the line at association 
with that common, vulgar boy ? ” 

“ Whatever lines must be drawn,” responded Di-. Garfoyle 
warmly, “ pray do not let us draw them between one little child and 
another. At least allow every child to feel himself a denizen of his 
Father’s house in this beautiful world of ours, and to recognize in 
every other child a playmate and a brother ! It is a poisonous and 


SOME CONFESSIONS 


41 


infectious doctrine which would separate them. I pray j^ou do not 
sin thus against your little son, Mrs. Goldenour.” 

“ But the difference in origin — consider that, Dr. Garfoyle ! 
Both the Goldenours and the Bruces have pedigrees as long as my 
child’s body. I might wrap him in the roll of his ancestors if 
I chose.” 

“If you compute only your boy’s sixteen ancestors, four genera- 
tions back, you will find it as diflicult to assign the precise quality 
of your, or of any child’s parental inheritance, Mrs. Goldenour, as 
to perform a complex operation of chemical analysis. You will 
have to abandon that plea, and to rely upon questions of actual 
disposition and character ; and there Shadrach, though manifestly 
very inferior to Bruce, will do your son no harm.” 

“ Well,” she said then, “ so let it be. I will write to you, and 
will return as soon as ever I am able ; meanwhile, the boy shall- 
come to you. And I am grateful. Now, what can I do for you? 
Find out something quickly, and find it now; my time is all but 
up. Don’t be too proud to own that even I might serve you in 
my turn.” 

As she spoke she rose and looked up at him in her pleading 
loveliness. He also rose, expecting Araminta’s summons every 
second. 

“What is there, now? ’’she said impatiently; “command me! 
Let it be for 3^ourself, if it may be ; if not, for someone whom you 
care for. If there is any service I can render for an^^one you are 
interested in, pray say it. Is there nothing I can do for you ? ” 

“ Yes,” he said suddenly' ; “ there is something j^ou can do. 
There is one I am interested in, whom you can serve. You too 
can help me. She is upstairs, ill in mind and body. Come now. 
Come and do your best for one who is in bitter need.” 

She hung back a little. 

“ But I cannot talk religion,” she said. “ And you have to talk 
good to sick people, don’t j ou ? ” 

“ You need not speak to her ; she will not hear you,” he 
answered. 

“ Is she only to look at me then ? Is the sight of me enough to 
please her ? ” 

“ She will neither see nor hear you,” he replied. “ Come.” 


42 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


‘‘But am I to give her money ? I have none for myself,” she 
once more objected. 

“ She has no use for money. She has all she needs,” he said. 
“ Come, follow me. You have nothing to do but to stand by her 
bed, and it shall be your acknowledgment of all that I may be 
able to do, or wish to do, for you. By your mere presence you 
will help to soothe and bless her.” 

Mrs. Goldenour looked puzzled, but followed her guide. 

Out in the hall the district ladies crowded past them as thej'^ 
ascended the stairs ; and the second curate, who was ushering them 
in, gazed after the beautiful apparition, and reflected that he too 
might become a canon ; and he determined that when he did, he 
would alwaj^s hear confessions by his study fire. And since he at 
present believed in the celibacy of the clergy, he forgot that by that 
time he might be married and the father of ten clamorous children. 
The district ladies all stared ; Dr. Garfojde had never said he had 
a niece or younger sister who might be staying in the house. 
“Who could it be ? Going up to the second floor too! What 
might it mean ? ” 

Meanwhile Dr. Garfoyle and his companion had reached the 
door of the paralytic’s room, Avhere they heard her pouring out her 
doubts, as was her wont, aloud. 

“Lord ! Tliomas saw Thee. He felt the wound in Thy side ! 
I see nothing. Lord ! I hear nothing. I am alive, but I am 
already as one who lies in the grave ! Darkness and silence sur- 
round me ! Where art Thou ? By what tokens wilt Thou make 
Thyself known to me ? Where are these signs of Thy Being for 
me ? I cannot even hear my own voice cry unto Thee. I am in a 
place of darkness, and the night encompasses me ! Wilt thou leave 
my soul in the misery of this hell ? Others by their senses reach 
Thee ; so once did I ! But even the dead heard Thy voice and felt 
Thy touch. Lord, I am dead, reach me in this living tomb ! ” 

Victoria Goldenour listened and heard. Her eyes grew wide 
with awe. 

“ Who is it ? ” she questioned. “ And what can I do ? ” 

“ Go in and stand by her side.” 

“ And you will come too ? ” she entreated. 

“ No, I remain here.” 


SOME CONFESSIONS 


43 


She went immediately, as tliough she were an obedient child. 
The harsh voice died away in inarticulate murmurings ; then the 
silence grew complete. Dr. Garfoyle remained by the door and 
watched. Then, as the rapture of gratified impression grew, the 
sufferer clasped her hands. 

“ An angel comes to me ! The angel of the Lord ! A token for 
me; how sweet the perfume ! ” 

Victoria was standing as near to the bed as she had at present 
dared to go ; but she had carefully kept out of the old woman’s 
reach. Now she turned and said to Dr. Garfoyle: 

‘‘ It is my Southern perfume ; from the roots of flowers in our 
Australian grounds, made from a recipe all our own and always 
used by me. She cannot know that I am here by any other 
means.” 

But the paralyzed creature’s delight increased as the sweet atmos- 
phere enveloped her. 

‘‘Go nearer,” Dr. Garfoyle said, “ let her feel that you are in the 
flesh.” 

“An answer to my prayer, a sign for me, even for me,” the 
words came from the bed ; “ He is ! and His messenger has come 
to me ! ” 

Touched by the simple rapture, and anxious to undeceive the 
poor creature, Mrs. Goldenour went nearer to her and laid a gentle 
hand upon her forehead ; but the old woman lay in an ecstasy, 
while rivers of joyful tears rained from her sightless eyes. 

“How can I undeceive her?” she asked, turning to Dr. Garfoyle 
in distress. “ You hear, she thinks she has received an answer to 
her prayers. She takes me for an actual arigel sent to her. What 
can be done about it ? How can I make her understand ?” 

“There is no way,” he said ; “and after all are you not a mes- 
senger of love and comfort sent her in her loneliness ? ” 

“ Let me at least be all I can be to her, then,” she said. And in 
perplexity and dismay the lovely visitor stooped and kissed the 
haggard, wrinkled brow ; and when she raised her head, her eyes 
were wet with tears of feeling. 

“ Now, come ; you have done all that you can, and I thank you,” 
said Dr. Garfoyle. “But my time is up, I must go; they are 
>vaiting for me in the class-room.” 


44 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


‘‘ But you have not enrolled me in that guild,” she said, recover- 
ing herself and smiling through her tears. 

“ You have enrolled yourself,” he answered with a sympathetic 
adieu. 

And yet, if all the thirty admirable women assembled round the 
table, with their Bibles opened before them, waiting for his antici- 
pated address, had walked upstairs in a body, and had all tenderly 
embraced Mrs. Pettit, Dr. Garfoyle would not have thought there 
was anything ])articulail3'^ interesting about it. Neither would 
there have been ; since the spirit which conceived the thought, and 
the lip's which executed it, belonged to Victoria Goldenour and to 
her alone. 

Victoria turned out into the dirty, dripping roadway. The rain 
still poured in torrents, the atmosphere was dark and heavy. 
Everything around her looked squalid and miserable ; what she 
supposed to be the very dregs and scum of human life circulated 
around her ; and she had a passion for all beautiful and artistic 
things, for all the glory and color of love and life. An immediate 
reaction set in. She was intensely overwrought ; strung up to a 
pitch of moral feeling which was the result of being physically 
starved of emotion. She turned her face, on which the tears yet 
shone, up to the dripping heavens ; the hood of Mrs. Pj^e’s bor- 
rowed cloak fell back from the white wreath upon her bright hair, 
and the rain followed the channel of tears down her pale cheeks. 
Her lips felt dry and defiled by the touch of the yellow parchment 
skin of the old crone, damp as it had been with the dews of spirit- 
ual agony. She took her scented handkerchief and scrubbed them 
till they were scarlet as the tassels of a begonia flower. Slie posi- 
tively yearned for some pure stream in which to wash them clean 
again, but only a noxious gutter ran by the greasy pavement, arid 
in it filthy children played ; such children as Dr. Garfoyle had 
actually dared to count in the same world with Bruce as “brothers 
in one Father’s home.” 

A squalid child escaped from a cottage doorway and fell right 
across her path ; by an irresistible impulse she pushed it quickly 
with her foot as it lay sprawling in the mud ; she kicked it, in 
fact ; it was small and weak, and it rolled over and splashed with 
a cry into the gutter. There it stemmed a little heap of refuse, 


SOME CONFESSIOirS 


45 


and the impure torreiit swirled and eddied round its abject form, 
A pang of regret shot tli rough Victoria ; filtliy as it was it is prob- 
able that she would at once have picked it up ; but its mother 
came out and cursed her for her conduct, and its elder brother 
lifted it up and twirled it like a mop over the dripping pavement, 
while its screams jarred upon her overstrung nerves as she 
hurried on. 

At tlie turning of the road she had to wait for a hansom cab to 
pass. It was being driven rapidly in the opposite direction. At 
once she heard her name called by a man’s clear strong voice. 

Mrs. Goldenour, Mrs. Goldenour ! In the name of all that’s 
good, what brings you here?” And the vehicle was pulled up 
so hastily that tlie powerful horse nearly fell back on his haunches. 
Mr. John Pengelley was inside it, and springing out as lightly as 
his very considerable bulk would allow, he stood by Victoria’s side. 
“ Get ill, Mrs. Goldenour ! Get in,” he exclaimed, “out of this 
beastly rain. There’s loads of room. I am only going a mile 
further down the road, to see if they have executed an order I 
gave them at the tile works, for a lot of channelled tiles for the 
roofing of my new stables. I have just been leaving birds and 
fruit at your quarters. 

“ Why, what is the matter with you?” he asked in a concerned 
tone, as he subsided into the cab, of which he occupied three- 
quarters of the seat, by her side. “ What on earth brings you 
down here in the pouring rain? Have you been taking divinity 
lessons? If so, I hope they have been administered by the pro- 
fessor himself, and not by those awful cads the students? But 
you are out of sorts ! I say, wdiat is it ? What has happened ? ” 

“ Nothing worse than that I have been taken for an angel,” she 
said with a little hysterical laugh. 

“ And upon my soul you are one, you know, though I’d make it 
hot for any one of those young clerics who has presumed to tell 
you so, you understand.” 

“No! No! It is you who cannot understand other people, 
Mr. Pengelley ; you carry your owm world wdth you wherever you 
go, and it is a world of fields and farms, of dogs and horses, of 
good dinners and choice cigars, of comfortable consciences, banker’s 
balances, and sound slumbers.” 


46 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


“ In wliich excellent condition, whether waking or sleeping, I 
adore you,” he replied with a show of gallant laughter. 

“ And 3''ou are perfectly satisfied with yourself ? ” 

“ Why not, my sweet saint ? You at least know no good reason 
to the contrary,” said Mr. Pengelley, who had fallen in love very 
honestly with the beautiful woman by his side. 

“ I am not a saint, or, to be precise, I am sometimes half a saint 
and half a sinner, and, unlike you, I am never satisfied with myself 
as either. And yet it is really strange that one cannot enjoy life 
without repenting it? If it is wrong to have a good time, what’s 
the use of being born? And why, on the other hand, when one is 
as good as gold and better, when one goes and joins a guild, con- 
sisting chiefly of moribund paupers, does one loathe one’s self after- 
ward as much as if one had instead gone and done the very nicest, 
wickedest thing one knew ?” 

“Upon my word, I believe they have caught and converted you 
down there,” John Pengelley said in pity, gazing at her tear- 
stained, rain-washed face, so very near his own, with astonishment 
and admiration. “But, if so, you have come to the wrong man 
for ghostly comfort. ‘Take it easy,’ is my motto; tlie sum of all 
ray philosophy and my religion, too, for that matter.” 

So saying, he smiled a superior smile, and ventured to lay his 
large hand soothingly upon her nervous fingers, lie never was 
depressed himself except when he was overfed, and he fancied that 
he knew all about these morbid miseries of pretty women, and in 
the case of a widow especially their existence was only creditable 
to her, and their cure was obvious. 

They drove to the tile-yard in the continuous downpour, and Mr. 
Pengelley got out and gave his orders, while his companion waited 
for him beneath the shield of an umbrella sticking out at the front 
of the cab. It was not an exhilarating situation. Then he 
returned and, closely pressed together side by side, they drove back 
to the town. Gradually Victoria relaxed her stiffness, and almost 
by imperceptible degrees she leaned more and more for support 
upon the strong man by her side, who was at once so robust and yet 
so tender to her weakness. Yet John Pengelley scarcely dared to 
indulge his affectionate disposition with native demonstrativeness ; 
he felt that there was no root to this flower of bliss. He realized 


SOME CONFESSIONS 


47 


that there would be no to-rnorrow to this niomeiitaiy surrender of 
an impulsive natui'e. Even while yielding to the insistent longing 
for John Pengelley’s outspoken and genuine sympathy, Victoria 
despised herself for the apparent encouragement she gave him. 

“ It should all end as it had begun,” she told herself. “ And was 
she not going away the next day, so what did it matter, after 
all ? ” 

This was how she argued ; yet when she got home, and John 
Pengelley had left her at the door of her lodgings, she wept anew' 
in the solitude of her own room. She put her boy away from her 
till she reappeared with all tokens of tears or rain carefully removed 
from her lovely face. She must look as usual for him. 

“ Spiritual loves are too attenuated for me, and earthly loves 
are too material,” she said inwardly. ‘‘In no love am I true to my 
own nature save in the love which I bear to my child.” 

Tlien she summoned Bruce, and, forgetting all wise resolves, 
sat down on the hearth-rug at his feet, and revelled in making her- 
self young with him, and in courting the play of his innocent 
fingers in her hair. There was such healing in their touch. Bruce 
took some flowers from her bright crown of hair, but she snatched 
them from him and flung them into the fire. 

“ Not those,” she said ; “those are not fit for you, they are not 
worth having.” In fact, they had been John Pengelley’s, his 
offering in substitution of her dripping artificial wreath. “ Here,” 
she said, “ are flowers for yo'W,” and she put into her boy’s hand a 
bunch of late yellow roses which she snatched as she passed out of 
the vicarage gate. 

Bruce’s attitude was perfect. He learnt that his mother and 
he were to part the next day ; he felt the tension of the situation in 
Ids sensitive heart, and attributed to it his mother’s evident dis- 
turbance of spirit, and her manifest desire to keep him close by 
her until he went to bed. 

It was but a momentary impulse, her acceptance of John Pen- 
gelley’s show of affectionate sj^mpathy; the exact counterpart in 
the region of natural emotion to that in the domain of moral emo- 
tion which she had just previously traversed. The one, discount- 
ing the other, doubtless left tlie balance of good and evil precisely 
where it was in tins mobile nature. 


48 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE YflFE 


“ Why am I made to be so good and then so bad ? ” Victoria 
Goldenour inwardly pleaded in self-defence. “ It is certain I can- 
not be one without the other.” 


CHAPTER V 

WAKING DKEAMS 

On the platform next morning Victoria met John Pengelley 
waiting to escort her up to town. She had not expected him, and 
was not pleased to see him. This sort of thing would not do at 
all. She had nothing to say to him, and her thoughts were full of 
the parting with her boy ; one hair of whose dear head was worth 
more to her than all her vacillating regard for this or for any other 
man. In her mobile nature the emotional pendulum was alwaj^s 
oscillating, and to-day she was in the crisis of a revolt against Mr. 
Pengelley and his attentions. She refused to enter the first-class 
compartment which he selected for their sole accommodation, and 
she hurried into a third-class, already more than half-full of mis- 
cellaneous people. 

“ I always travel third-class,” she said defiantly. 

Nevertheless he persisted and placed himself uncomfortably 
opposite to her, wedged in by a multitude of impedimenta. He 
offered her a box of Fondants ” and a basket of fruit, and placed 
a lovely bouquet of flowers in her lap. She declined to taste the 
one or smell the other. The good people in the compartment took 
him for a young husband wdio had had a bad time of it, and who 
was trying to propitiate an offended wife. In short, she made her- 
self so persistently unfriendly that at Hitchin Mr. Pengelle}’ gave 
up the attempt to please her, and migrated into a first-class smok- 
ing-carriage. 

Then Mrs. Goldenour’s manners underwent a sudden change. 
She became delightful to all the worthy women who were her 
companions. She divided Mr. Pengelley’s grapes and peaches 
among them, she made their children sick with sweetmeats, and 
at the London terminus she quite forgot the flowers. She also en- 
deavored to forget or evade their donor : and she pretty nearly 


WAKING DREAMS 


49 


succeeded. At any rate, she manoeuvred so well that John Pen- 
gelley failed to catch the address she gave the cabman, and was 
forced to content himself with seeing her disappear, leaving him 
planted upon the encumbered pavement. 

John Pengelley, however, took life too easily to be seriously dis- 
concerted by a check of this nature. He could bide his time. He 
regarded it all as fair play, well within the recognized rules of the 
game, which might otherwise lack some stimulating attractiveness. 
There were always things to be done in town. He knew where to 
dine well. It would not be a wasted day. He would let Mrs. 
Goldenour alone for a while and would return home the next morn- 
ing. She had not given up her lodgings in Cambridge, as he knew, 
and he imagined her safe to turn up there again. Pengelley was a 
man who was never in a hurry about anything, and who never lost 
heart or flesh. 

Dr. Garfoyle, on the contrary, was a very preoccupied man : 
he held many important oflices, was much esteemed for public 
worth, and much consulted in affairs of intricate and far-reaching 
significance, both in church and society. There was something 
almost absurd in the way in which his interest and aid had been so 
coolly invoked on behalf of a passing stranger and her child : first 
by Mrs. Bratton-Fleming, and afterward by Mrs. Goldenour her- 
self ; but Dr. Garfoyle had for years displayed a practical readiness 
to respond to the claims of the law of service, and this had pro- 
duced the inevitable result that people who themselves had nothing 
to do misinterpreted his motives. They were even ready to imagine 
him an amiable busy-body but one degree removed from a gossip. 
They supposed he “ liked helping people ” — probably from the 
variety which it lent his days, or possibly from the exercise of 
power or patronage which it conferred. 

By the standard of his own capacity, or the measure of his own 
worth, each person explains another’s conduct. Hence Mrs. Brat- 
ton -Fleming’s translation of Dr. Garfoyle’s character and her easy 
demands upon his time and thoughts. No doubt there were Jews 
in the old days in Palestine who confided to each other, as they 
left the synagogue, or trod the o”ter courts of the Temple, that 
the Prophet of Nazareth “ liked busying himself with sick people,” 
and “ gaining notoriety by his cures real or professed,” that “ as 
4 


60 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


he no longer worked as a carpenter he had nothing else to do,” 
and tliat “it afforded him the interest of a new sensation to 
attempt to raise the dead.” 

But prejudiced as she had been at first, Victoria probably judged 
her new friend with truer simplicity and with deeper wisdom by 
the time that her boy came to the vicarage. Slie had instinctively 
realized that Bruce was received there not merely because it pleased 
Dr. Garfoyle to have children about him, but because deep in his 
faithful heart, in welcoming the child who had such a tragic history 
written in the lines of his countenance, he obeyed as a lofty privilege 
the call to place his powerful judgment and deep wisdom at the 
service of a little one in need. 

Men and women felt when with Dr. Garfoyle that he was always 
ready, both s^mipathetically and practical)}", to take his part in 
lifting the common burden of human woe, and they brought him 
their loads accordingh^ But as gratitude is a gift of tlie gods, the 
characteristic of rare and noble natures, a thing of almost super- 
human attainment, when they had heaped their packages of misery 
upon his willing shoulders, they were apt to turn away and say 
“ he likes using His strength ; he is happier so employed ” ; or “ he 
has no loads of his own to carry, a middle-aged bachelor like that ; 
no wife to bother him, no children to make him anxious ; we are 
really quite generously kind in permitting him to share the responsi- 
bilities and cares which are ours.” Thus they shifted the weight 
of obligation and relieved themselves also from the task of simulat- 
ing an emotion which they were unable to feel. 

Dr. Garfoyle had no misshapen idiot sons of his own, so Budge’s 
mother considered that he might as well wash and feed hers ; and 
the motive which led him to take Bruce Goldenour into his own 
house did not differ from that which inspired him when he placed 
fresh straw in the attic for the comfort of the wretched Budge. 

After four days’ stay at the vicarage, during which time Bruce 
was duly reported to his absent mother as “ being perfectly well 
and happy,” a change came over the boy. Dr. Garfoyle had him 
immediately removed to a bed in his own room, that he might watch 
him personally by night. All the ordinary symptoms of fever and 
of extreme nervous excitability were present, and it was evident to 
Dr. Garfoyle’s practised eye that the child was sickening for some 


WAKING DKEAMS 


61 


malady. Sliadracli was in a robust condition ; no serving maiden 
bad failed to appear. Budge, the loathed and tlie unwanted, was 
in the normal state of any healthy animal, but had not as yet been 
removed to the asylum, owing to some red-tapeisni in tlie matter of 
the signatures to the certificates required — only this one child, whom 
Dr. Garfoyle liad scarcely spared from his own sight, whose every 
movement had been regulated by his personal care since he came 
beneath his roof, lay with lieavy eyes and parched lips, through 
which the incoherent words began to fiow. 

Expert as he was Dr. Garfoyle preferred himself to watch by 
the child’s bedside, noting every symptom for the benefit of the 
professional colleague wliom ho had summoned. He had also 
written to the child’s mother. From twelve to four o’clock in the 
morning the fever rose, and the boy, fiinging himself from side to 
side in the bed, was only restrained by the strong protecting hands 
which controlled his movements. Now first Dr. Garfoyle fully 
realized in all its tragic extent what liavoc liad been made of the 
quivering nerves and delicate sensibilities of the child by the 
tragedy which he had so early witnessed. In his delirious agony 
he began to shout out all the long imagined details of the ghastly 
scene at which he had assisted. Before his terrified but blinded 
eyes the whole misery was re-enacted. 

For hours Dr. Garfoyle held the unhappy boy firmly in his 
calm, strong hands, using with intent all his powers of soothing 
and control, with an unchanging attitude of will, which was at 
once an invocation and a command. And presently a lull came in 
the wild distress of cerebral excitement ; a change passed over the 
boy’s face, he looked at Dr. Garfoyle with seeing, questioning 
eyes, and sank back upon his pillow, exhausted, but past the ner- 
vous crisis. 

Then Dr. Garfoyle summoned Mrs. Pye, whom he had hitherto 
refrained from calling, for the whole scene was so terrible that the 
presence of any other human being would have increased the strain 
upon his own nerves^ 

The morning brought the proof that Bruce w^as suffering from an 
attack of scarlatina. Mrs. Goldenour was telegraphed for ; but by 
midday she had not appeared. 

Downstairs in the dining-room, at the hungry hour of one, the 


52 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


two curates and the otlier young fellows, whom Mr. John Pengelley 
so unhandsomely called “ cads,” were sitting together over their 
pudding. Shadrach was waiting upon them ; he had had scarlet 
fever long ago, and it had agreed with him very nicely. Suddenly 
the door opened, and the haggard figure of a man precipitated 
itself into their midst. 

It was William Birmingham, the ex-verger. He was fully dressed 
and carried a bag and wraps as though for a journey; yet he had 
not left his room for months before. He coughed horribly and held 
on to the back of one of the young men’s chairs for support, groan- 
ing, strangling, unable to articulate. The senior curate rose and 
placed him in a seat. 

“How now, Birmingham ? ” he said kindly. “ Is it not very rash 
of you to leave your bed and expose yourself to all the risks of cold 
in this way ? ” 

“And am I not exposed already to worse risks than those of 
cold ?” screamed the angry man with the whistling falsetto of the 
phthisical patient. “ What arrangements, I desire to know, have 
been made for my safety in the present crisis? Have suitable 
lodgings been secured for my accommodation ? Of course the risks 
of infection are nothing to Dr. Garfoyle — he is a professional man; 
and as for all jmuj^oung fellows, why, of course, as you are all going 
to become clergymen, you must take your chance ; but for me, in 
my delicate state of health, to be left to make provision for my own 
safety is an outrage, an outrage, I say ! an olfence against common 
charity ! ” 

One of the young men choked down a laugh; this maddened the 
indignant verger, and a fresh fit of coughing threatened to strangle 
him. Mrs. Ti-upper and Shadrach stood looking on, Shadrach 
fully appreciating Mr, Birmingham’s exaggerated sense of his own 
importance. 

“I am going,” Birmingham continued, as soon as he could speak, 
“ I am going to Dr. Garfoyle’s official residence, to the canon’s 
house in the close, since no provision has been made for me here. 
I shall go into residence, I say ! ” Here the students, unable to 
control themselves, burst into suppressed laughter and rushed from 
the room. 

“ I have put up my things — my surplices, my two cassocks, and 


WAKING DREAMS 


53 


rny sanctuary slippers. There may be a vacancy in the cathedral 
staff and I am prepared to till it ; but I must liave my quarter’s 
salary ; I have my rai way fare and other expenses to consider. 
And mind,” he continued, “ I have never been dismissed, onl} 
superseded ; I have not resigned my office here, and I shall bring 
an action in a court of law if my claim is disputed.” 

In vain did the senior curate remind the man that he had been 
housed, fed, and nursed when homeless and no longer able to hold 
his post as verger ; this was not Birmingham’s view of the matter. 
From the very fact that he had been entirely supported since he 
broke down, he argued his right to be so supported. It stood to 
reason that since he had been fed and nursed, to food and nursing 
he had a right ; and if there wa^ any flaw in tliis argument it lay 
beyond the range of his logic. That his benefactor’s conduct 
toward him might be the measure of Dr. Garfoyle’s generosity and 
not of his, Birmingham’s, deserts, was not a thing likely to enter 
into the verger’s calculations. So the curate argued in vain, and 
the matter had to be referred to the vicar ; who, in pity to a mori- 
bund man, directed that he should be permitted to do as he wished. 
So Shadrach called a cab and brought in a telegram from Sir 
Victor Bruce at the same time : 

“Mrs. Goldenour gone into the country. Address uncertain. 
Will return to-morrow without fail.” 

So for a second night did Dr. Garfoyle sit by the sick child’s 
bed, who in all his intervals of consciousness now began to ask 
incessantly for his mother. Mrs. Pye’s presence agitated him ; 
she fussed about, remembered her own importance, related her pre- 
vious experiences, and betra3^ed the depressing view which she 
took of the situation. 

In the course of the night the terrible cries began again — again 
the child assisted at his father’s death. 

“ Let me go ! ” he cried, as the ghastly tragedy was perpetrated 
before his wild, beautiful eyes, and he tried to escape, to fling him- 
self out of the bed, “ let me go ! At least let me hide behind that 
screen, do not let me see it any more ! Oh, let me die too. 
Father, father, take me in your arms and let me go with you ! ” 


54 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


Dr. Garfoyle soothed the child again by the exercise of gentle, 
steady pressure, and by the moral force of his tranquil, yet authori- 
tative nature. He ceased crying out as suddenly as he had begun, 
sobbed for breath, and gazed mournfully at Dr. Garfoyle ; but his 
mind, diverted by a power superior to his own, was still astray. 

“All mother’s pretty things are spoiled,” he said in a feeble 
voice. 

Now, if all this had been a mere baseless delirium, Dr. Garfoyle 
would at once have administered a soothing potion, and would 
have trusted to the child’s slee})ing away the painful fancies of a 
disordered imagination ; but as the condition was one in which the 
veritable impressions of the child’s deepest self rose to the surface, 
it was evident that, with any cerebral excitement, this nervous 
agitation would recur perpetually. Some fresh association of 
ideas must be established in his mind. Some new picture must be 
impressed upon his imagination before the old and frightful one 
could be elfaced. The I’eagents which brought up the one set of 
impressions must actually henceforth serve to develop the other. 
Therefore Dr. Garfoyle, laying one hand upon the boy’s burning 
head, and taking his little hands in the other, spoke to him in 
earnest, penetrating tones : 

“ Listen, Bruce, quite quietly, while I talk to you. Do not move, 
but lie still and listen. Your father is quite well now. You have 
made a mistake. He is all healed and cured. He is no longer cut 
to pieces or bleeding any more. It is years ago now since Jesus 
Christ healed him and cured him, restored him and made him 
quite well again ; and now he looks beautiful, and strong, and 
happy in his spiritual body ; and he would have me tell you this. 
He is so sorry that his little boy saw him so terribly hurt on earth ; 
but do you know he has made me understand that it hurt you a 
great deal the most to see him hurt? I know that he does not 
remember anything about it now. He fell down, and then he 
forgets it all. It did not hurt him, Bruce, half as much as it hurt 
you when you fell down those kitchen stairs.” 

“ Didn’t it ? ” said the boy softly ; “ oh, I am so glad ! I thought 
it hurt him so, because it has hurt me here ever since,” and he 
placed his little hand upon his heart and gasped for breath. 

“ When ainmne we love is dead,” said Dr. Garfoyle, speaking 


WAKING DREAMS 


55 


very slowly, so that each word might reacli the apprehension of 
the child with the power of conviction — “ when anyone is dead 
their pain has ceased, but not ours ; it sta^^s with us because we 
loved them so. Over and over again, for days and weeks and 
years, we feel in our hearts and bodies, as you say, all that we think 
the}’- sulfered, and so we mix ourselves uj^ with them, and think 
they feel as we do ; but that is a mistake, you know. All the while 
they are away in their whole happy bodies, Bruce ; and often, I 
think, they are even trying to make us feel tlieir joy.” 

“ Do you know ? Does fatlier tell you ? Who tells you ?” 

“Yes,” Dr. Garfoyle said, “I know. When Jesus died He said 
His pain was ‘ finished,’ and when your father died his pain was 
finished. Listen, Bruce ; never again are you to see that dreadful 
thing : Christ will not have you see it, and your father will not 
have it. Next time it comes to you, you are to remember that it is 
all over long ago, and you are to see your father, if at all, in his 
new whole bod}^ ; beautiful and shining and joyous and young. 
You are to believe that he speaks to 3^011 through me.” 

The boy listened with a long, rapt gaze fixed upoii the inspired 
countenance which bent over him. Softly his ewes closed, and 
his breathing grew gentler and more regular, until, in the vision 
which the speaker’s words called up, he passed into a peaceful 
sleep and awoke refreshed. 

Victoria Goldenour appeared the next da}", but not until Dr. 
Garfoyle had sent to meet train after train, and Bruce was seriously 
fretting for his mother. She advanced into the hall to meet Dr. 
Garfoyle with averted face, and the flush upon her pure white 
cheek was evidently due to the crimsoning of anger and not to the 
emotion of gratitude. 

“ He is really better,” said Dr. Garfoyle, hastening to meet her 
with extended hand, which she refused to see — “ better, but he can- 
not of course be said to be out of danger 3^et. The malady must 
run its course ; and in his case there is so much cerebral and nervous 
excitement to contend with that the chief risk lies there.” 

“ You need not tell me that ! ” she said bitterly. “ Say at least 
that you have called in the best ph3^sician that you know, and that 
you have not been doctoring him yourself from your memories of 
medicine in your youth ; then let me go upstairs at once. I have 


56 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


come prepared to inirse him.” And slie indicated a little char- 
acteristic gesture that her dress was of a white washing material. 

“ My memories of medicine in my youth,” responded Dr. Garfoyle, 
with one of his all-pardoning smiles, “ have constituted me your 
boy’s nurse. The use of having studied medicine, Mrs. Goldenour, 
is that one dares to nurse ; and I have nursed your boy night and 
day, as tliough he were my own. I have summoned the best 
physician of my acquaintance, and I have carefully observed his 
directions, I assure you.” 

But she was still unsoftened in the angry misery which her wise 
friend saw and pitied. If she would keep back the starting tears, 
her anger must find vent in bitter reproaches ; unreasonable woman 
as she was ! 

‘‘This,” she exclaimed, as she ascended the stairs, “this is what 
has come of my allowing Bruce to come into this low neighbor- 
hood ; no doubt he has caught tlie infection from some of these 
squalid cottages which surround you.” 

“ The little fellow has taken no harm here,” said Dr. Garfoyle 
with perfect courtesy. “ It may deliver you from all self-reproach 
upon that score to learn tliat, in the interests of sanitaiy science, 
the physician that I called in has hunted down the source of the 
infection ; he has traced it to the landlady’s children in your lodg- 
ings. She was indeed greatly to blame in the matter.” 

His dignified yet kindl}^ courtesy told upon her irritability; she 
turned and faced him on the landing, the tears shining in her 
pleading eyes. 

“ Forgive me,” she said ; “ it is I who am to blame for bringing 
all this trouble upon you. I know I am very selfish in my miseiT. 
Somehow I cannot stop to remember that I have no claim.” 

“Some day,” he said, smiling, “perhaps I may succeed in mak- 
ing you remember that the need constitutes the claim. But now, 
here we are at the door of the room — tell me, before we go in, what 
sort of a nurse are you ? ” 

“ A mother, who would give her life for her child as she would 
have done to save his father,” she replied, placing her trembling 
hands in his. 

“I see,” he answered; “one whose nerves are overstrung 
and ” 


WAKING DEEAMS 


57 


“ And who was dancing all last night,” she interposed, speaking 
bitterly. “ I had gone to some friends in the country for a ball, 
and I hadn’t left a proper address. When I got back they showed 
me your telegrams, and my grandfather gave me a check, which he 
had refused me before. lie was really sorry about the child’s 
illness.” 

“ And you have had no sleep,” Dr. Garfo^de continued, “ and you 
have been sick with mortal fear ; too ill with dread to be able to 
eat or drink. Not only are you one who has in imagination gone 
before to meet the worst, but you carry with you everywhere the 
memory of having upon the threshold of your life met death in an 
appalling form ; and in this state of mind and memory you think 
yourself prepared to nurse a child so observant and sympathetic 
that he adopts all your thoughts, learns all your fears by heart, sees 
all your spectres, and feels all your griefs ; a child who is so 
much a part of your very being that you cannot, if you would, 
keep anything in the dim recesses of your thought hidden from 
him.” 

“ Yes, it is all true,” she said impatiently ; “ but there is no 
remedy. Let me go to Bruce. Where have you got him ? Ah ! 
in your own room.” 

There was no other,” he answered plainly. “ But I will not let 
you go in, in your present state. Bruce is asleep just now, and your 
nurse is with him. You must eat, drink, if possible sleep, and cer- 
tainly wear a different aspect before he sees you. Look at him from 
here, through the open door. So. Trupper will show you a vacant 
room next to the old paralytic’s. It was Birmingham’s. I wish it 
were a better one ; but there is no other.” 

Victoria glanced at Dr. Garfoyle’s kindly but resolute face for a 
moment, as though to measure her powers of rebellion against his 
will ; then obeyed him simply, like a tired child. But when night 
fell Dr. Garfoyle went in and found her crouching on the floor by her 
child’s bedside. Bruce was beginning to rehearse the dismal scene 
which haunted his memory, but with less intensity, as though some 
second thought, or after-impression, followed to cast doubts upon 
its reality. His mother was biting the bed-clothes in her agony, 
and she had stopped her ears to prevent any sound of distress 
escaping her which might add to the boy’s excitement. 


58 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


Dr. Garfoyle raised her up, soothed her by liis wonderful power, 
and sent her away, explaining to her that it was absolutely neces- 
sary that he alone should watch by Bruce’s bedside, to continue, as 
he had begun, the control of the boy’s nervous condition. This 
was the third night on which he had kept his watch, and even on 
his calm temperament fatigue was beginning to tell ; and when in 
the early morning the excitement, which was sensibly diminished, 
was over, and the boy as usual fell asleep utterly exhausted. Dr. 
Garfojde also succumbed. He was sitting upon the floor in an 
uncomfortable position, leaning partly against the child’s bed, 
partly against the seat of a large armchair which stood beside it. 
He had adopted this posture in order to be the better able to reach 
Bruce, and to control him as he lay. 

At six o’clock Victoria entered softly, and thus she found them 
both. She had slept well, as he had desired ; she had eaten, and 
had dressed herself with care. She came creeping noiselessly in 
so as not to disturb the child, and she saw them both asleep as they 
were. Gently she slid into the capacious chair, and withdrawing 
a cushion from its depths, she placed it on her knees, and supported 
her benefactor’s head upon it. 

At the change of Jiosition Dr. Garfoyle gave a quiet sigh of 
relief, but slept on as peacefully as the worn-out child upon the 
bed, with his fine head thrown back and pillowed tenderly upon the 
cushion on her lap. But he dreamed, and the dream was of long 
ago, when gentle hands bad rested on his hair, and- tender kisses 
fell upon his brow. Moved by a simple impulse of gratitude and 
innocent tenderness Victoria passed her hand over his still abun- 
dant hair, and let her fingers rest for an instant upon his sleeping 
eyes and broad, smooth brow. 

He stirred and smiled, but did not wake, and she withdrew her 
hand and sat motionless. Still the dream persisted ; and, as con- 
sciousness grew, he sighed at the immortality of the old sorrow 
which still quivered with life after the strenuous suppression of 
twenty years. He moved and waked, to find himself supported 
by Victoria’s aid. 

“ You were quite tired out,” she said ; “ you have sat up three 
nights for me. You must not be angry that I made myself a 
pillow for your wearied head.” 


WAKING DREAMS 


59 


“ My weiglit must have been a burden too heavy for your slender 
strength,” he said apologeticall}^, as he hastened to rise. 

“ It was a burden of which I am indeed not worthy,” she 
replied. “Pra}'^, go and rest. I am calm enough now to nurse my 
boy.” 

In sleep the old love of years ago had dominated him. Scenes 
remote from his present surroundings had encompassed him ; emo- 
tions, aspirations, crushed by the weight of years, throbbed with life 
anew. In the dreamland to which he had passed, beneath the in- 
fluence of Victoria’s caressing touch, he had tasted a renewal of 
life’s prime ; he had seen the morning gloiy of the world with the 
sanguine eyes of youth ; he had known in his unaging heart the 
p.assionate joy of love’s embrace. But as he awoke the beauty of 
the dream faded. His exalted individuality painfully contracted 
within the limits of his present state. He was again merely the 
Vicar of St. Amwell’s, the Canon of St. Ives, the Burnett Profes- 
sor of Patristic Divinity, not the young man rejoicing as a bride- 
groom, exultant in the coming of the enchanted princess. 

His countenance was luminous with this divine renewal when he 
first awoke ; but as the consciousness of surrounding conditions re- 
turned to him he was troubled by the difficulty of I'eadjusting his 
words and actions, and he altogether failed to connect Victoria 
Goldenour’s presence with the suggestions of his dreams. She, 
seeing his face grow stern and cold, imagined that she had be- 
trayed her affectionate gratitude to his displeasure. 

“You are angry now,” she said. “I have offended you ; but 
think what you have done for me. How shall I ever repay you ? I 
have done that which has hurt j^our highly sensitive nature.” 

“You! What liave you done?” he said. “ Nothing to apolo- 
gize for, I am sure. I do not understand your speech ; but come 
into the next room, lest we disturb the child. I slept by your boy’s 
bedside ; I was, I own, exhausted. Perhaps I am still but half- 
awake. In imagination I confess I had entered into an Eden from 
which I was exiled in days long gone by. Now and then in dreams 
I cross its threshold still, and then the vivid pictures of the past are 
apt somewhat to blur my vision when I awake. I crave your par- 
don for my faults of manner. The magic of mj^ 3^outh had seized 
nm and possessed me. The experience was overpowering while it 


60 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


lasted, and I awoke dazed and confused ; but the tide has turned 
now, the past is swiftly receding. My spirit was, I believe, 
momentarily overwhelmed.” 

“And were your memories welcome to you ?” she asked. 

“ Our record of mental possessions would be a veiy poor one,” 
he answered evasively, “ without some indestructible memories of 
our 3 'outh ; but 1 must not linger here, your boy is doing well, and 
I must go to Budge ; I fear that we have conveyed the infection to 
him.” 

“ Why can’t his mother come and nurse the poor creature ? ” 

“His mother has ten children, one an infant,” he replied. “And 
all living at home in two cottage rooms ten feet by twelve.” 

“ Why cannot the district nurse see to him ? They tell me she 
lives here.” 

“The vicarage must not infect the parish,” he replied shortly; 
“she has left the house. I assure you, if I could have made other 
arrangements for the poor thing, I would most thankfully have done 
so. They have, indeed, promised me to make special arrangements 
for his reception in the fever ward of the hospital, if possible ; but 
I doubt their power to do it.” 

“And all this trouble and expense I have brought upon you. 
At least you will let me pay my share,” she said, tendering Sir 
Victor Bruce’s check. 

He took it, smoothed it out, and returned it to her. 

“ Happily,” he said, “ I am not a poor man. I have more than 
sufficient for all that a reasonable man can desire.” 

“ But if Budge dies you will let me pay for the funeral. It will 
be a good thing if he does die, won’t it ? ” Victoria asked in a 
clear, crisp voice. “ I have not seen him ; but they tell me he is 
dreadful.” 

The tone and nature of the speech hurt Dr. Garfoyle’s sensitive 
soul. He turned away and left her without a word ; and mount- 
ing the attic stairs for his revolting task, he repelled the impression 
of her words as though some evil thing had struck him. The 
deeper the depth of human misery, the greater the power demanded 
to meet it ; perhaps within the precincts of that ancient town there 
was no one else that day found worthy to serve and wait on Budge. 

“This is truly an extraordinary house,” Mrs, Goldenour said to 


WHICH SHALL IT BE? 


61 


herself, as she watched her friend’s retreating form ascend the 
stairs ; and when he had disappeared, returned to her lonely watch 
by her child’s bedside. “When I do try to help them they all mis- 
understand me. The old woman upstairs took me for a scented 
angel ; the master of the house mistakes my grateful care for the 
touch of a vanished hand : to her I was a spirit; to him I am the 
ghost of some ‘dear dead woman,’ and nothing more.” 

“ With Mr. Pengelley’s compliments and kind enquiries,” said 
Shadrach, putting his ruddy face in at the door, and holding in his 
red hand a magnificent bunch of choice flowers. A note accom- 
panied the gift and a basket of fruit followed. 

“ To this one at least I am neither a ghost nor an angel, but a 
woman in flesh and blood,” Victoria said to herself as she glanced 
from the written words to the picture of her own rare beauty in 
the glass. 

John Pengelley’s temperament might be inartistic, even some- 
what coarse, but his warm recognition of the enticing qualities of 
her personal loveliness soothed the wounded vanity stung by the 
want of comprehension displayed by Dr. Garfoyle. Moved by an 
almost childlike impulse, she had bent over him and had caressed 
his hair ; and he had had no thought but for a dead past ; and 
even while her eyes still shone upon his face, he had forsaken her 
for the unclean and repulsive animal in human shape whom he 
tended upstairs. 


CHAPTER VI 

WHICH SHALL IT BE ? 

A DAY of November gloom and fog settling down deeper and 
deeper over the dreary locality ; the unattractive vicarage en- 
wrapped in a yellow, murky atmosphere, and within its walls the 
shadow of death gathering closer and closer. 

Absolute silence reigned now in that house so lately the centre 
of life and activity. The two sisters Pye and Trupper worked 
below, in a tired, taciturn way, no longer relieving the tedium of 
their common thoughts by criticisms upon those they served. The 


62 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


boy Sliadracli, stolidly unmoved, passed up and down the stairs on 
errands from tlie kitchen to the rooms above. Only the soul of the 
paralyzed woman dwelt in a paradise of certainty, melted away in 
an ecstasy of faith, for she held that to the remnant of her withered 
senses the Loi’d had revealed Himself with spices of Edom and 
touches divine. 

Below, in the best chamber of the house, the lovely boy who 
had won his way so quickly into Hr. Garfoyle’s heart lay con- 
scious, but scarcely breathing, exhausted to the very verge of 
extinguished life. The pallor upon his beautiful brow, now that 
he seemed already far beyond the following of mere human 
experience, did but add to it a crown of more than childish dignity. 
In the purity of absolute innocence, his mien was almost inspiring. 
Yet it seemed as though the pity of things that he might never 
know, and the loss of those which he might never learn, burned 
deeply in his mournful eyes ; the fleeting spirit gazed from out 
them with so yearning an intensitj^ of tender questioning upon the 
tragic mystery of maternal passion and of pain which was being 
unrolled before his fading sight. It was at once as though he 
knew all things, yet knew nothing ; all that the spirit might teach 
him, nothing that he might have learnt from the lips of one that 
loved him ; as though, while conversant with all that the ages 
might have handed down to him, he was unversed in anything 
that the little world around him might have shown him. Every- 
thing that the purest and most lofty intelligence could instinctively 
grasp was his, nothing that the vulgar diurnal experience of such 
a child as Shadrach might have suggested. The child’s beauty 
was the consecration of the place wherein he la}^, and when Dr. 
Garfoyle, entering at the door, literally removed his shoes, he did 
so ostensibly lest he should disturb the sufferer ; in reality because 
his glowing heart was penetrated by the conviction that the place 
was indeed a shrine from which a lovely soul was preparing to 
wing its flight into the higher sphere of its perfection. 

Toward nightfall the mother’s anguish was dominated by 
despair. All dsij she had moved about the room silent and intent 
upon each little act of service, but ever with dumb agony gnawing 
at her heart-strings. Her sharpened senses had noted every external 
detail of the dull November day ; her ears had been hurt by the 


WHICH SHALL IT BE? 


63 


tinkling bell from the church just across the paved way, calling 
misguided men and women — so she felt — to pray to an inhuman or 
non-existent deity who would not grant her child a single day of 
his sweet young life. In her misery Victoria had seen and had 
resented the punctuality with which Dr. Garfoyle had attended at 
his numerous services. She had noted and had been exasperated 
by the gathered serenity which shone upon his countenance when 
he re-entered the room. She had felt annoyed at his leaving the 
house, after making a careful toilet, for his lecture at eleven 
o’clock. 

In spite of the knowledge which she possessed of the grave dis- 
organization of his days caused by the mixing of her life with his ; 
in spite of the eloquent fact that he was more than nurse or doctor 
to her child ; although the world outside had multitudinous claims 
upon him, yet she bitterly resented his ever leaving Bruce’s bed- 
side ; and most of all did she resent the care which he bestowed 
upon Budge up above in the garret ; a care, as she well knew, 
rendered imperative by the failure of his attempts to procure the 
idiot’s removal to any hospital or asylum whatever. 

Every other dying or suffering creature was, it seemed, too good 
to suffer or to die in the company of this human disgrace, of this 
travesty of humanity. None might be insulted or disgusted, in 
the hour of his extremity, by this awful presentation of what 
extreme forms of vice and animalism could contrive to show. The 
lowest of all demanded that at least in their hour of mortal anguish, 
such intimations of irnrnortalit}^ as might touch their trembling 
spirits should be uncontradicted by the witness of this epitome of 
human degradation. So Dr. Garfoyle alone remained pure enough 
in spirit, strong enough in nerve, calm enough in faith and charity 
to touch this loathsome lump of flesh and blood, which lay sodden 
in a stupor from which no intelligence of any outward thing from 
birth to death might ever draw it. And it had been from this 
service that he had passed to the pure atmosphere of the quiet room 
below, where, with bent head in reverent attitude, he had knelt, 
hushed in the presence of a being whose face alread}^ shone with 
the radiance of the victorious spirit, whose quickened intelligence 
still enlightened the earth, while already the glory of the invisible 
world seemed bi^aking upon its inner vision. Could it be possi- 


64 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


ble ? — it was not even thinkable — that hand in hand, Bruce and 
Budge were to take the same last journey together, toward the 
same goal 

In Victoria Goldenour’s tortured mind the terror grew. 

“ Do not leave me,” she cried, clinging to the compassionate 
man. “ You must stay with me this last night. You must ! You 
cannot be so cruel as to forsake me now.” 

‘‘ The end has not come yet, and your child may not die,” Dr. 
Garfoyle answered resolutely. 

“ All my hope lies in you. In Him you call ‘ God,’ if indeed 
He exists at all, I have no hope whatever. You, you are God to 
me,” she cried, following him into the next room, whither he had 
led the way, fearful lest her agonized words should reach and rend 
her child’s heart. 

There she stood before him, more lovely in the abandonment of 
her grief than ever in the pride of her bright days. 

Dr. Garfoyle bent over her, his whole true heart going out to her 
witli pangs of sympathy which vibrated his strong frame. 

“My child, my child,” he said, laying a compelling hand upon 
her shoulder as he placed her in a chair, “ my whole soul suffers in 
your sorrow, my heart breaks for your grief. I will return. I will 
look in every hour of the night. I carry you with me when I leave 
you. Listen, I do not imagine it to be the divine will that your 
poor boy should die.” 

She gasped, and looked up awe-stricken in his face. 

“ I have a strong inner conviction, a knowledge indeed I might 
say, for which I can give you no pathological reason ; indeed, 
speaking as a student of empirical science, there is small hope for 
the boy ; but,” he said — lifting up his head with a joyous move- 
ment of certainty, as though he stood alone and undismayed 
beneath an unclouded heaven — “ but the boy will live ! That is my 
faith. Can yon not make it yours ? Oh, receive it from me, I 
entreat you ; for in the conviction lies your power to guard the 
struggling life, to fan the flickering spark into a flame.” 

Victoria took both his hands in hers, bent her head over them, 
and pressing her lips upon them covered them with tears and kisses, 
and cried : 

“I have no strength, no power, no outlook beyond the narrow 


WHICH SHALL IT BE? 


65 


room and the failing breath ; I have nothing but despair — or hope 
in you. Save him, sir ! You love him too, I see you do.” 

“ I love him,” said Dr. Garfoyle, “ as I never should have thought 
it possible to love any child unrelated to me. All that love can do,' 
I do, and have done, for you both.” 

“Then,” she said, rising up, “hear me; if you will save him, I 
will give him to you. He shall be yours. And if you will not have 
me too, I — his mother — will go quite away, and never trouble you 
again. My grateful words hurt you, I can see they do. You have 
put the love of women beneath your feet. You have made your 
nature solitary to its depths ; but wlien I laid my hands upon your 
head, as it rested on tlie cushion on my knees, it was I who sum- 
moned up your past ; and I doubt if you can banish it again.” 
Even in that instant of supremely genuine emotion she glanced at 
her own lovely image reflected back to her by the mirror at her 
side. “ If I were to you what I am to others; if you saw me as I 
truly am ; if my love and devotion were worth anything to jmu, 
how gladly would I bring all that I am or have to serve and bless 
you ; but if I am indeed an intrusion in your life, if all that I am or 
have besides is of no value for you, then take my child alone. You 
are no longer jmung, you have none near you to delight in ; the 
day may well come that the boy ma}’' prove the rarest blessing life 
can hold for you. But am I indeed so poor and worthless in jmur 
eyes ? Have I indeed no value for you ? Men have told me other 
things than that. Must I indeed not say to you, ‘ Save my child, 
and take me too ’ ? ” 

Again she sank down upon her chair and wept with emotion. 

Dr. Garfoyle passed round to the back of her chair and leant over 
it, while his strong frame shook with governed agitation. In that 
instant he knew that the discipline of years, the armor in which he 
had clad his nature, w'as shivered at the breath of this fair woman’s 
words. 

“ Nothing to him ! ” Why, his whole soul was dissolved, his very 
nature melted that he might take her in. Yet he groaned in spirit ; 
not without strenuous bitter effort might the cruel self-suppression 
of five-and-twenty years end in this. Then was all his life wasted ? 
What of all the tears and prayers, what of the silent agonies and 
lonely watchings of the night, known only to his Maker and him- 
5 


66 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


self, since as a young man he bad resisted the temptation to end in 
self-destruction the days which had seemed so worthless for love’s 
sake ? 

The shock was a mighty birth-pang of agony and joy. Yet the 
habit of self-control was still omnipotent. Not for an instant did 
he waver in his resolution. He leaned over her chair and said, 
in a voice which trembled indeed, but which in her ears sounded 
singularly cold and guarded : 

‘‘ You are unnerved to-night, my friend. You do not know what 
you say, or you are unable to calculate the effect of your words. I 
will take care of you and of your boy as though I were indeed 
his father. Do not trouble your gentle heart with these useless 
attempts at expressing gratitude. We are too near to each other to 
need words. If you would please me, obey me ; go downstairs and 
get some food, and try and rest for half an hour. Leave me here 
and send the nurse away; I would be alone for half an hour with 
our boy. More than that time I cannot give at once, but I will 
return.” 

“ And why not more than half an hour ? Do you count half- 
hours now ? ” she cried, springing up, her white face burning sud- 
denly, indignation and misery flaming in her shining eyes. Had 
she not laid herself at his feet, the prize of all her youth and beauty 
as the purchase of her boy’s life, and now he valued her at precisely 
“half an hour” of his time. 

“ * Half an hour ’ when my child dies ; when you alone can save 
him ! How, I know not, but I know you can ; by your faith or by 
your skill, I know not which; and with all life to live after, you 
give me ‘half an hour.’ Oh, you and your God are cruel, wicked; 
I renounce you both ; cruel, cold, hard, deaf, pitiless ! One abases 
one’s self, one crawls and prays to you both, one even becomes good; 
one promises, one would perform, and one meets with silence, 
immobility, indifference ; untouched, unmoved, you offer ‘ half an 
hour,’ a ‘ hope,’ and thirty minutes ! ” And in a frenzy of furious 
weeping she flung herself face downward upon the couch, and 
rocked herself backward and forward, sobbing in agony.* 

Then Dr. Garfoyle, laying a hand upon her head with tender 
pressure, in a persuasive voice which compelled attention said : 

“Listen, Victoria” — he had never called her by her name before. 


WHICH SHALL IT BE? 


67 


and with the alert attention of the hysterical nature she noticed it 
at once. “ Listen, Victoria, and be calm. That poor parody of 
humanity up above is nearing his death hour, and he must not be 
left. He shall not die alone. Your boy is surrounded with affec- 
tion, he has his mother to support him, his nurse is with him. If 
any change or necessity occurs, send for me and I will come. I 
shall be at hand all night; but not even for your sake, not even 
for your boy’s, shall that poor wreck of human nature meet the 
last moments of his miserable life uncared for and untended. If 
there were anyone else to nurse him then it might be otherwise ; 
but you are well aware that neither of the women in this house 
will approach him, that not his own mother, nor any other human 
being whom I have been able to secure, will go near the place 
where he lies.” 

She had ceased weeping, and for a few seconds remained abso- 
lutely silent and still ; then she stood before him erect, calm and 
determined, and lovely as a dream. “And now hear me,” she 
said. “ I will nurse Budge for you, if you will remain with Bruce. 
I will go upstairs at once, and I will do everything that is required. 
If needs be, I will take his awful head in my arms. I will nurse 
him as tenderly as though I cared for his life, if j’^ou will only 
spend this night by my child. You need not fear. I shall not 
shrink nor fail, and if he dies he shall die upon my bosom : I 
promise it to you.” 

He looked at her with ardent admiration, restraining with effort 
the deep sense of enfolding love which possessed him, as she faced 
him in her proud beauty, quick to the very finger-tips with mater- 
nal love and agony. 

“Yes,” he said deliberately, “you shall go and tend Budge. 
It will be better so. The distasteful task will cost you some 
qualms of physical loathing, which you may easily surmount, but 
nothing more. There will be no reaction of nerve, no sympathetic 
torture in nursing him. Budge suffers as an animal suffers, his 
pains are inarticulate, never extending to outward consciousness ; 
and the age-old problems of humanity which are suggested by him 
will not perplex you in your present state.” 

“On condition,” she said, “that you save my boy, which you 
alone can do.” 


68 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


“ I alone ? ” he questioned reprovingly. 

“ Yes, you alone. What faith have I in your God ? Did He not 
let my beautiful young husband pour out his life-blood at my 
feet ? Would He not have let my child die but for you ? But 
you I do believe in. See, whatever I may be in your eyes, how- 
ever valueless, at least you must confess that I am good enough to 
nurse Budge ; Budge is only a body, but Bruce possesses a soul ; 
for the questionings of the pure spirit, even of my own child, I 
may possess no answers ; for his inspired soul no language ; for 
the eloquent appeal of his sweet eyes I may find no reply ; but for 
the brute pains of Budge’s mortal body my care may suffice. That 
is how you feel about me ; yes, I know it well. I am not a stupid 
woman. I can read men’s thoughts. Kow let me go. For Bruce’s 
life there is no price too great for me to pay. But if my darling 
dies, your faith will show him the heaven that his sweet spirit 
seeks ; your hand will lead him to the golden gate whereat he 
pictures that his father waits to lead him across the crystal pave- 
ment which his childish imagination thinks to tread. Your courage 
will support him if he shrinks or fears. The visions of your spirit 
will give form to his. Go ; for you God will exist still, even if 
Bruce dies ; for me He is dead already.” 

“ My child, do not say any more now,” Dr. Garfoyle answered 
gravely; “ it shall be as you have chosen; I will call you if I need 
you, you will come for me if I can help you. At present we have 
to work and not to talk.” 

She gazed at him as though she would read the secrets of his 
veiy soul ; then putting up lier sweet face like a penitent child to 
be consoled, she said humbly : 

“ I am good now, please kiss me.” 

But resisting the impulse to gather her to his heart, he blessed 
her only, as a father might have done, and she passed up the stairs, 
dumbly crying as she went to the Power she had protested that she 
disbelieved in : 

“ If I do this for Thee, do Thou have mercy upon me. By the 
care that I have of this one, save my child.” 

She saw by the dim light that burned in a stand that the creature 
on a mattress on the floor yet breathed ; she crouched down by its 
side and looked at it. Slie had never seen it closely before ; only 


WHICH SHALL IT BE? 


69 


once or twice, when she had been upon the landing to call Dr. 
Garfoyle down for her own services, she had caught a glimpse of 
something horrible, that lay inert and groaned beneath coarse 
coverings. And now she was all alone with it, and it was going to 
die. 

Immersed in physical collapse Budge, the human brute, la3^ The 
marvellous spectacle of an ever varying external world had never 
penetrated his intelligence. From the moment of his birth in a 
squalid hovel to that of his death upon a garret floor no ray, no 
spark of divine reason had ever pierced the darkness of Ins soul ; 
if indeed he had a soul at all. 

At first he gave no sign of life beyond inarticulate moans, as of 
a beast in agony ; but presently, as the hours wore on, he began 
to throw -his distorted arms and twisted hands about : she took the 
misshapen things in her own tender palms and held them with a 
sweet constraint. She gave him drink when he was thirsty — nay, 
he did not even know he was athirst at all, he knew nothing, nor 
ever would know. Then he began to roll his huge and horrible 
head ; the ej^es opened, and one of them fixed on hers with a 
blind, blank stare ; the other gazed upon the opposite wall. This 
was more than she could bear, this ghastly refraction of the thing’s 
vision ; she passed one arm beneath the head and drew it upon her 
soft bosom, and her tears mingled with the death dews which began 
to gather on the coarse lined skin. 

She pined to go downstairs, to gather tidings of her child ; fancied 
that Dr. Garfoyle could not come to her because he too was assist- 
ing at the final scene, at the last moments of the rare life of her 
own lovely boy. Once more the irrepressible cry burst from her 
lips, “Christ, I have done this for Thee; do Thou that for me, 
and heal my son.” 

There was no bell in the attic for her to ring, no one for her to 
summon to her assistance. Pye and Trupper had, as she knew, 
positively refused to nurse “a pauper’s idiot,” a creature whom in 
their poor vulgar parlance they styled “a mere hog”; moreover, 
Pye was angry and displeased at what she chose to speak of as 
“Dr. Garfoyle’s interference ” with her work. “But she might at 
least have come to bring me tidings,” poor Victoria sobbed. 

So the hours passed, making for her an eternity of misery. 


70 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


Blit before even a faint streak of wintry dawn had shone through 
the skylight above her head the attic door was pushed open a little 
way, and Sliadrach’s young face beamed in the doorway, looking 
as rosy, commonplace, and contented as ever. Victoria tried to 
speak, but her lips refused to frame a question. 

‘‘ The vicar’s sent me,” said the boy, “ to say that Master Bruce 
is doing well and is in a lovely sleep.” 

That it was well with him and that he slept ; surely this was the 
old ominous biblical phraseology ! 

“ You are deceiving me, boy ; it is the sleep of death ! ” she cried, 
still holding the heavy, restless burden in her wearied arms. 

‘‘ No,” said Shadrach in even, unmoved tones, “he is doing very 
well. He is asleep. Dr. Garfoyle could not come himself without 
disturbing him, or he would have come or sent before. • He says 
he sends his love ; and how have you done here?” the boy added 
in childish phraseology. 

At that instant the shapeless being in her arms was seized with 
violent convulsions; his whole frame was shaken and twisted, 
writhing out of her grasp ; and the death rattle sounded in his 
throat. Shadrach stood transfixed, his whole honest face growing 
grave and troubled ; yet keenly, curiously interested in this, as in 
all other natural phenomena by him unobserved before, with the 
healthy, inborn instinct of the young, uncultivated male. But 
he was frightened ; although fascinated, too frightened to run 
away, even were his curiosit}^ not too strongly engaged. 

“Oh, Shadrach, this is dreadful ; can we do nothing? Can you 
do nothing?” Victoria cried, meaning, “Can you not fetch some- 
one ? ” 

But Shadrach had only one thought in connection with service 
in that attic. 

“ Shall I sing ?” he asked, and without waiting for her answer, 
if indeed she heard what he said, which was doubtful, he reso- 
lutely turned his back upon the, to him, awfully attractive spec- 
tacle, and lifting up his clear, ringing voice, he sang, with his eyes 
fixed upon the rafters of the unceilinged room. 

He chose a hymn of triumph and of praise — strange “ Nunc 
Dimittis,” for Budge — and through the silent house the sweet echoes 
pealed and rang. But when he had done singing, before even the 


WHICH SHALL IT BE? 


71 


sweet melody of his song had died away, he turned and saw that 
the idiot had fallen back a lifeless, quivering lump, with the lady’s 
arms still beneath his head ; and that her beautiful face lay beside 
Budge’s on the pillow in a deadly swoon. 

For once Shadrach had seen enough. He turned and fled, shout- 
ing for assistance. And so Dr. Garfoyle found her, three minutes 
later, when summoned by the boy’s cries ; he lifted her up in his 
strong arms and bore her to the room adjoining that wherein her 
child lay in a happy sleep ; there he placed her on the bed, breath- 
ing over her a benediction as he laid her down. 

Victoria opened her eyes and questioned him silently. Dr. Gar- 
foyle saw and understood. “ Yes,” he said ; “ Bruce lives and 
will do well.” 

In that moment Victoria Goldenour believed in God. Budge 
was dead, and Bruce lived. All her prayers had been heard. 
Bruce, so lovely, so precious, so intelligent ; Bruce, her only son, 
her joy, her life, the one treasure that she possessed on earth, the 
one love in which there could be no change, no failure in response. 
Bruce lived, and Budge had died ; Budge the undesired. Budge 
tlie hideous, the repulsive ; Budge, who had been too much of an 
animal even to wear clothing ; Budge, the human brute, was dead. 
Dead without even knowing that he had ever lived, or understand- 
ing that he was born to die. God reigned in the heavens once 
more since Bruce was alive on earth, and Bruce’s mother adored 
and worshipped ; believed in His overruling Providence ; gave 
thanks, and devoted herself body and soul to His service, as repre- 
sented to her by His messenger, Terence Garfoyle. 

In that moment her faith overflowed. The Supreme had judged 
rightly in that His judgment appeared to accord with her own 
estimate of the relative values of the two lives. Never again 
would she doubt, and with rivers of happy tears she besought for- 
giveness for ever having doubted at all that He was, and that He 
ruled rightly, when her child looked up at her once more with 
glad, dilated eyes. 

But Budge’s mother was actually of a different mind. Even she 
had a notion as to the due management of the universe, and she 
felt quite competent to express an opinion concerning the justice of 
the fiats of life and death. 


72 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


By the side of the very grave in whicii, at Di’. Garfoyle’s charges, 
the unfortunate corpse was laid, she also vindicated her maternal 
portion in what she now called her “dear afflicted son,” by roundly 
abusing Dr. Garfoyle for having brought him within reach of the 
illness which caused his death. True, she had in life refused the 
morsel of food or drink requisite to keep him from starvation ; 
and she had wearied all her neighbors with lamentations over the 
day which gave him birth ; but now he was her “ favorite son,” 
since a “ mother always loves the best that which has the greater 
need.” So she wept and scolded, and threatened pains and penal- 
ties on the head of him who had supplied her own lack. Thus she 
eased her conscience of some lurking remnants of self-reproach 
and vindicated her maternal sentiments at once. 


CHAPTER VII 

MAN AND MONK 

John Pengelley was an out-door sort of man. He was accus- 
tomed to stroll about the gardens and paddocks, and to stride over 
the lands at North Hall, with a pipe in his mouth and several dogs 
at his heels, for most days in the 3^ear. The}^ preserved their own 
game largely, and had many guns down for the season. His next 
brother was the same sort of man as he was himself ; but in him 
John had an opportunity of observing his own foibles magnified 
into faults ; his own weaknesses exaggerated into wickednesses. In 
Graham, John’s honesty became rudeness, his affectionate disposi- 
tion something unworthy of any good name. John used to say of 
himself as a boy that he was “ always engaged in setting examples 
to Graham,” and of that undesirable brother that he was “ useful 
only as a warning to others.” Of those others, one brother was a 
very young doctor in Manchester, the other a lieutenant on board an 
ironclad attached to the Mediterranean Squadron. 

Their mother, Mrs. Pengelley, was very pleased with herself, 
in that she was the mother of four fine sons and had never con- 
descended to the feebler production of daughters. Their father had 
been dead for some years, and as John was the eldest son, Mrs. 


MAN AND MONK 


73 


Pengelley had begun to think that she should like him to marry ; 
a daughter-in-law, however undesirable in herself, was valuable 
as being a necessary adjunct to the possession of grandsons. Mrs. 
Pengelley was a queer woman, with an insatiable appetite for heirs 
male worthy of a matron of an Eastern nation, and an entire con- 
tempt for the members of her own sex which must have been dic- 
tated by an intimate knowledge of herself. 

She spent twenty-two hours out of every twenty-four in her own 
room, where she was engaged in curing herself of imaginary 
maladies by the application of mild currents of electricity. This 
exercise represented her notion of “duty”; the rest of her time 
was spent in the more pleasing avocation of “resting”; with her, 
an equally sacred employment of time, not by any means to be con- 
fined to the seventh, the first, or to any particular day of the week. 

Accordingly Mrs. Pengelley was “ resting ” one morning, when 
she was unexpectedly disturbed by the entrance of her son John. 
She had already conceived the idea and the hope that “ John had 
a serious attraction somewhere.” Game and grapes, fruit and 
flowers, had been perpetually going out of the larder ; and John 
himself had taken a run up to town which had never been quite 
clearly accounted for. Now she thought she read some important 
disclosure in his open face, so she unclosed her feeble eyes, turned 
her pillow, arranged her shawl, and prepared herself to be forgiv- 
ing about the unusual interruption to her morning’s rest. But 
John only stuck his hands in the pockets of his rough shooting- 
coat, looked out of the window, and abruptly asked her : 

“ Mother, have I ever had scarlet fever ? ” 

Now, Mrs. Pengelley had once, and once only, been guilty of a 
literary effort ; it was when she set up an exercise-book twenty 
years before, in which to inscribe certain details concerning her 
sons’ healths, heights, and general development. She had left off 
writing anything in it when they grew up, because since then there 
had been events in the family which it might not have been quite 
convenient to record. At present she made answer to her son’s 
enquiiy by proposing to read him all the details of the disease as it 
had affected himself. He declined the offer resolutely. 

“ But you don’t feel you are sickening for it again, do you ? ” she 
asked in alarm, scanning his countenance earnestly. “You do look 


74 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


rather red in the face, now that I come to look at you,” she added, 
“ and I understand that it’s very much about. Nowadays people 
are so sensitive they take everything two or three times over. Oh, 
John, do beware ; just go and draw that blind up that I may see 
you better, and give me the thermometer; it’s in the comb-drawer. 
I’ll get up at once and take your temperature myself; I can finish 
resting afterward.” 

“Nonsense, mother; lie still, and tell me, has Graham had it?” 

“ Beautifully ; he began it ; here it is — page 22. He began on 
a Monday, and ” 

“ Oh, well, that ’ll do. I don’t care for all that, I only ask because 
I want to have a little chap out here who is just convalescent from 
it. This air’s very fine, and we know what the milk is, and the 
place is a hundred times healthier than where he now is.” 

Mrs. Pengelley grew grave at once. 

“ Take care, John,” she said ; “ do, pray, take care. Of course 
he has got a mother, and that sort of young woman is so designing. 
It’s not as though it w^re Graham ; you wear your kind heart 
on your coat-sleeve. Do remember your future prospects. His 
mother’s sure to be coming after him.” 

“Not at all, she will come with him,” said John imperturbably. 

“ With him, John ! What can you mean ? Have you no regard 
for my present state of failing health ? You shouldn’t, John ; there 
are convalescent homes. I’ll ask my brother to give them an order. 
However quixotic you may be, this is really going too far. I can 
understand that you wish to do your duty b}^ them, and not to act 
like Graham ; but really ” 

“ Mother,” shouted John angrily, “ be so good as to wait until 
things are explained to you before you offer opinions upon them. 
The boy is nothing to me, but I love him as if he were my own, for 
his mother’s sake ; and that mother is one of the sweetest, daintiest 
women in creation ; she is a lady, in my eyes, without compare. 
Now, do you understand ? I tell you I mean to have them here, 
and you must make up your mind to receive them, as soon as the 
child can be removed from where he now is. I intend to go over 
and fetch them myself. ** 

“Now, John,” urged Mrs. Pengelley querulously, “what is the 
good of taking things up in that way ? You know how anxious I 


MAN AND MONK 


75 


am to see you well married, and I’m sure I’m not one of those 
bigoted women who are alw^ays pretending to form their own 
opinions about what does not concern them. I am thankful to say 
that I liave lived with men all my life, first with my father and 
brothers, and afterward with j^our father and yourselves, and I 
know better than to interfere as women do nowadays about things 
they cannot possibly understand ; but I do wish that you would 
find some nice, bright, sensible girl as your wife ; someone who 
might relieve me of the servants, and the house, and all that. I 
should be so glad to be able to have more time to rest in my own 
room, and not to have to see after things at all ; I am not nearly 
strong enough. As I said, I can make allowances for a flirtation 
and all that ; but what’s the serious use of a woman with a child 
already, and one she seems to take about with her, too ? ” 

“ Mother, I do wish you could comprehend once for all,” said 
John, with some extra heat, “ that though no doubt you are a 
most kind and indulgent mother, I do not need these ‘ allowances ’ 
you talk of making for me.” 

“ Well, your brother Graham does, if you don’t.” 

“I dare say; but in my opinion, mother, it might have been 
better, even for him, if he had found you less disposed to be indul- 
gent; however, that is not the question under discussion between 
us. I beg you clearly to understand that the lady whom I wish 
you to invite here with her child is a young widow whose acquaint- 
ance! have made in some of the best houses in university society. 
She came from Australia with her boy, and at present she is stay- 
ing with Dr. Garfoyle, one of the divinity professors, at St. 
Amwell’s Vicarage. You might call upon her, if you felt your 
health equal to the drive. The child has had scarlet fever, 
but is getting on all right now, I believe, and I am anxious to 
invite them here, for change of air and also because — you may 
as well understand at once — I admire the mother greatly, and I 
should be prepared to take that step which you are pleased to say 
you so greatly desire, with her consent.” 

“A widow, a colonial !” said Mrs. Pengelley doubtfully; dis- 
carding her pillow and sitting straight up upon her bed. “ She 
will have too many opinions of her own for this house. Your 
brothers will not like it, if you do.” 


76 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


“She certainly has a good many opinions, I believe.” 

“ What age is she ? And what is her name ? ” 

“ As her boy is seven years old, I take it she must be twenty- 
seven or thereabouts ; but she does not look anything like it. I 
will tell you all about her if you will write the letter of invitation 
which I am prepared to dictate, and give it to me to put into her 
hands at the earliest opportunity I can make.” 

“ Well, I don’t really mind widows. I am one myself,” said 
Mrs. Pengelley, as though this were news to her son. “ Sometimes 
they have more sense than young unmarried women ; but it all 
depends on what the first husband was. He is never really dead 
and buried ; they always dig him up again the day they go to 
church with someone else. It’s a truly awful thing, as your dear 
father used to say, to marry a woman attached to a ghost. I might 
have married again myself when you were all little fellows ; but I 
knew your dear father would never have wished it. However, as 
I said, it all depends ” 

“ Yes, of course, it does depend, mother,” said John Pengelley 
conclusively; “everything always does, you see, and particularly 
in this instance, on whether she will have me or not.” 

“ Is she rich ? ” asked Mrs. Pengelley, descending from the bed 
and slowly making her way to the writing-table. 

“ In beauty and in debts, but in no other way, I should say, 
mother; but we have all plenty here for ourselves and our wives. 
John Bull can afford to tip the colonies yet, when they come home 
from school.” 

“ Oh, yes ; of course you must tip the boy,” said Mrs. Pengelley, 
accepting her son’s speech with unimaginative precision. “ But I 
must sleep first before I write any letters, John ; it requires con- 
sideration.” 

“No, mother, it requires none from you, and I have already 
given it all it’s going to get from me. I tell you Mrs. Goldenour 
is a beautiful woman, with manner and wit and words at com- 
mand ; with a knowledge of the world and a remarkable history. 
She is a woman who will have half the university at her feet, so 
soon as the young one allows her to show herself in society. Once 
let the fear of infection subside, and I shall not have another 
chance except in company with the whole field.” 


MAN AND MONK 


77 


“She has no girls, no more children, I trust?” asked Mrs. 
Pengelley anxiously. 

“ Not a ghost of a girl, nor any other boy.” 

“ How long has her husband been dead ? ” 

“Some years. Come, mother, you may as well give in at once. 
Here is paper, pen, ink, all you require. Now write as I dictate ; 
and remember what lovely times you will have when you can retire 
in favor of your daughter-in-law. You need scarcely ever see her, 
if you don’t care to ; you can have your own rooms shut off with 
double doors, if you choose ; and as for Graham and the others, 
they can look out for themselves, or behave when they’re here.” 

“ They won’t like it.” 

“I dare say not ; but who cares?” 

“ I really don’t quite see it,” said Mrs. Pengelley ; but, as she 
did it, perhaps that did not matter. 

“Don’t date it, mother,” said her son, leaning over her as she 
wrote. “ I have no intention of sending it by post. I mean to 
deliver it myself the first day that Pve a chance of seeing Mrs. 
Goldenour.” 

Accordingly, with his mother’s missive safely in his pocket, 
Mr. John Pengelley presented himself that very afternoon at the 
vicarage gate. 

The vicarage garden in November was still a picturesque place ; 
but somehow or other John Pengelley always found that Nature 
had a habit of reminding him of eating and drinking. He con- 
cluded that vegetable products, such as trees, naturally suggested 
questions of nutrition, not only to caterpillars ; for instance, the 
beeches, which had now lost their rich autumnal tints, and were 
of a dull decaying brown, looked like uncooked beet-root ; whereas 
the maples, which had changed their earlier garb of old-rose and 
saffron, now suggested spoilt strawberries and preserved pineapples 
done down into one. The leaves of the larches were of the color 
of pale brown sherry ; while the dark shining boughs of some ev6r- 
green oaks formed a solid background for these various tints, and 
reminded him irresistibly of a green baize table-cloth. 

It had been a mild damp season, and the beds were still brilliant 
with dahlias and asters, and with other late autumnal blossoms ; 
while the lawns looked green and fresh in the pale November sun- 


V8 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


liglit. All this John Pengelley had time to note before Mrs. Pye 
came to the door, accepted his cards, but rejected his call, and left 
him to make the best of his way back again to his dog-cart, with 
his mother’s note still reposing in his pocket. 

“But why,” he thought rebelliously, “should Dr. Garfoyle’s 
table be graced by the presence of the lovely woman whose wit was 
to his amorous palate like veiy excellent champagne ? Upon such 
a moral teetotaler as the elderly divinity professor, surely Victoria 
Goldenour’s charms must all be wasted.” 

For four days Dr. Garfoyle had scarcely seen his fair guest. He 
had m.anoeuvred to escape her society ; which was easy, as she was 
in constant attendance upon her boy, who was now bounding and 
leaping with happy agility toward renewed health. But if he had 
scrupulously avoided all separate conversation with Victoria, none 
the less the fact of her presence beneath his roof had possessed 
him night and day, but he felt the need of time to readjust the 
mental and moral equilibrium which she had so completely dis- 
turbed. Moreover, he shrank with all the sensitiveness of his disci- 
plined nature from seeming to avail himself of her frankness. The 
words which she had uttered in the abandonment of her grief had 
been to him rather a revelation of his own inner mind than of her 
disposition toward him. They had been extorted from her by the 
stress of circumstances. She had been moved by tenor to utter 
them, as when one cries out in sleep over some ghostly dread. On 
awakening she might well have forgotten lier own words. So he 
reasoned. If he could be capable of recalling them to her calmer 
memory, he would be something bearing no resemblance to a gentle- 
man. Yet for himself their effect remained. To himself her cry 
for help had been nothing less than a trumpet-tongued appeal to a 
resurrection of his deeper self ; that self which had been buried for 
long years beneath the monumental stone of custom. 

The immediate result was a state of intellectual chaos. He 
recalled the cold touch of the razor against his throat, and with it 
the memory of the hot passion which had armed his youthful hand 
against himself. He remembered the absolute self-mastery of five- 
and-twenty years. He recalled his earlier views as to the celibacy 
of the clergy, together with the later modification of opinion which 
sanctioned marriage only when in it love became sacramental. 


MAN AND MONK 


79 


passing thus through the material element to a purer atmosphere 
wlierein every loving spirit, whetlier in the body or out of it, 
became a divine messenger to man. 

It was entirely characteristic of Dr. Garfoyle that the matter 
took on this wholly inward aspect. It was in this region of thought 
that the question must be debated, and in no outer court of conduct. 
Since the crisis of his youth all his' life had been regulated before 
this hidden tribunal of conscience. There and nowhere else must 
this supreme event of his later years be ordered. 

He had been lecturing the evening before for a society of art and 
literature at the Victoria Rooms, on the “ Monastic Asceticism of 
the Middle Ages” ; and his mind was still as full of his subject as 
it could be, in subordination to the claims of his strange new love, 
this love which had awakened the surprised manhood in him ; and 
now it pleased his fancy to trace in himself the rigid spirit of 
mediaevalism, and to welcome in Victoria Goldenour the jubilant 
spirit of the Renaissance, standing before him with laughing eyes. 
He saw that there was no reasoned ground-work for her actions ; 
that she conducted her life in a childlike way, urged hither and 
thither by almost primitive emotions. And for him she represented 
the world’s youth. Her beauty was an assertion of the fact that 
the lessons of the senses possessed a value which he had neglected, 
as opposed to the teachings of the intellect which alone he had 
cultivated. She pictured for him the desirability of aesthetic as 
contrasted with ascetic cultivation ; but how would she meet him 
in his demand that all powers and passions should alike receive their 
consecration from sacramental uses ? 

For a quarter of a century his sensuous nature had been dumb ; 
dust had gathered upon the keys of the instrument ; but at the 
touch of her fingers its notes had mingled with the air of a common 
day, and the fulness of response had been startling even to him- 
self. Surely his youth was not dead. It had lain in the grave ; 
but it was resuscitated, and in the resurrection which it expe- 
rienced it arose with new force to add it to the old. At first there 
had been confusion in his waking thoughts ; he had stood as one 
amazed in an unknown world ; now he saw plainly, and was pre- 
pared to act deliberately. 

On the evening of the same day on which John Pengelley paid 


80 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


his futile visit, Dr. Garfoyle sent up word to ask Mrs. Goldenour to 
be kind enough to come down and make his tea, if she could spare 
him a brief hour. He knew now what he had to say to her. 
After a brief delay she came. 

She entered the room half shyly, and stood smiling upon him 
from the doorway. Her dress was of soft silk, white, but touched 
up here and there with bows of heliotrope ribbon, and in her 
bosom she wore a bunch of heliotrope flowers and of pale yellow 
roses from his own conservatory. It had not escaped his notice 
that John Pengelley’s flowers had been left neglected on the table 
in the hall. 

In her presence his reawakened senses stirred ; her influence 
affected him like a delicious draught of fresh spring air; his per- 
ceptions regained their early liberty and began to play their part 
with keen delight in their new exercise. But the habit of years 
was dominant still ; the passion was new-born and had no leave to 
speak. So he received her with apparent calm, though the hand 
trembled in which she laid her own. 

She noted it with the keenness of such a woman. 

“ I asked for the favor of your company to-night,” he said, 
“because to-morrow I go away.” 

She started in evident surprise. 

“ Bruce is so much better now it will not signify that I have to 
leave. My lectures are finished and my term of residence at the 
cathedral begins at once. I have three months to keep there 
now.” 

“ And what are we to do ? ” she asked in dismay, which was well 
affected ; possibly it was quite genuine, for she had even become so 
accustomed to lean upon him that it struck her as desertion to 
hear he was going awaj^ 

“ You will, I trust, be quite comfortable here,” he replied, 
“until you are able to move; you had better take Bruce to the 
seaside in about a month’s time. Pye and Trupper remain to 
serve you, and Shadrach is absolutely the best companion possible 
for Bruce, since he has no nerves and no imagination to trouble 
himself or anybody else.” 

“And this is your final suggestion for me,” she ask^d, not with- 
out a touch of scorn ; “ to live in your house during your absence 


MAN AND MONK 


81 


as though I were absolutely dependent upon your charity, like the 
paralyzed woman upstairs ? By the way, I have never entered her 
room since she took me for an angel. If she found me out it 
might seriously endanger her faith.” 

“ I shall be glad,” he answered, controlling himself, “ if you will 
see that she is not neglected during my absence.” 

Then there was a pause. Victoria drank her tea without trying 
to conceal the fact that she was letting a few tears fall into her 
cup. 

“Tea and tears aren’t nice,” she said with a little nervous 
laugh; presently she added gravely, “Well, if you are going 
away, I shall have Bruce ill again, that’s certain. I am so dread- 
fully nervous about having tlie responsibility of his nerves all alone 
no\v^ You have completely stopped those dreadful scenes he used 
to go through ; how, I’m sure I don’t know. Must you really 
go?” 

He bowed assent, and for some seconds they were both silent ; 
then she suddenly rose and stood before him; all the tears were dry 
now, her eyes shone, and there was a provocative intonation in her 
voice. 

“Well,” she said, “who is to speak first? Shall we have ‘she 
to him,’ or ‘he to her’ ? If I had my choice I should like the last. 
I rather think I did begin. Supposing you go on ; say it out, even 
if it is something like this : ‘You have put me to no end of trouble 
and expense, will you be good enough to take yourself off, and to 
allow the embryo parsons and the museum of patients to return ?’ 
Or is it to be ‘ she to him ’ ? ” 

And she changed her voice, and became as sweet as a loving 
child, and as demure as a gentle nun. 

“You have been so good to me ; so very, very good. No one 
was ever half so good before. My boy adores you; he owes his 
life to you. You have done more for him than I should have 
thought it possible for one human being to do for another. Other 
men leave me flowers to smell, compliments, civilities, or even 
sweets to suck. None of these other people that you help are 
grateful ; now, I am. Is there really notliing Bruce and I could 
do, or be, for you ? Is it to be sentiments, or facts first ? ” 

“ Facts first,” he said with a smile ; “ dry details, if you please.” 

6 


82 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


“ When Bruce was a baby boy,” slie said, laughing merrily, “ he 
once asked me what sort of ‘ tails’ details were — did the butchers 
deal in them ? ” 

“The ‘dry detail ’ is that I am a canon of St. Ives, and that 
I leave Cambridge to-morrow,” he said, crossing over to where she 
now sat and seating himself beside her ; “ for the rest you make too 
much of what I have done for you. You speak out of the generos- 
ity of your gentle heart. Whatever I remember, I remember only 
to esteem and bless jmu for on my side. But I remember also that 
I am old enough to be your father. If I took advantage of the 
generous expression of gratitude and affection which overwrought 
feeling has wrung from you, I should be less of a man and a 
gentleman than I hope that I am. As to my own feeling about 
you, I have determined not to permit myself to speak of that at 
present ; but I will ask you this one thing : Will you allow me to 
come and see you, wherever you may be, when three months are 
over ? You will then have had time to know your own mind.” 

“A dozen times over, and to change it as many or more,” she 
said coldly. “ Now I know you are indeed old enough to be my 
fatlier, since you can sit there calmly and propose to wait three 
months before you even come to see me ! You are as foolish as 
old men always are. Dr. Garfoyle ! Do you suppose I set about 
arranging my life by quarters? Wh}^ I never wear the same dress, 
and I never know my own mind, on two consecutive days. I veer, 
I tell you, like a straw on a stream, or an eddy on a current. I 
shall probably go and stop at North Hall directly Bruce is better. 
Do you know what that means? I am open to the reception of in- 
fluences from all sides. Don’t you know that ? You who know 
so much, do you really know so little of one veiy trivial woman, 
young enough to be your daughter ? Are you really foolish enough 
not to take her at her word at once, but to leave her to think it, oi- 
ls it you, over ? ” And as she spoke she put down a tea-cup empty 
now of tea or tears, and with more scorn added plainly : “Do you 
suppose you will bear so much consideration. Dr. Garfoyle, and do 
I require so much from you ? ” 

“ Victoria,” he said, “ this is cruel ! It is even more than I can 
bear ! I have determined to go away to-morrow for your sake 
rather than my own ; and I will not tie you by any promise, which 


MAN AND MONK 


83 


you might easily repent. Can you not see that I Iiave no right to 
take advantage of your position liere ? Write to me, I entreat you. 
Pell me when I may come and see you. I will follow you anywhere, 
at any time or place, so soon as I receive your bidding ; then 
indeed you will not find me slow to remember the words which you 
have said to me. I dare not tell you what you are to me. I could 
never leave you if I did. Do not mock me, I beseech you. Be very 
sure that as the dearest part of my own life I shall carry with me 
the thought of you and of your child ; more I simply dare not trust 
myself to say.” 

“ When do the curates come back?” she said irrelevantly; and 
her question and its tone jarred upon his emotion painfully. 

“ Surely not so long as you are good enough to make the vicar- 
age your home.” 

“ And who is to pay for all this trouble and expense that I have 
caused you ? ” 

“ I remember only the pure pleasure of your stay ; moreover, I 
have a large income — it is immaterial to me.” 

“ How nice ! ” said Victoria enthusiastically. “ I wish I had. I 
never can remember what I pay nor what I owe ; but my grand- 
father’s check will buy a bottle of sulphuric acid, or whatever is 
required to purify your rooms. There is no dependence to be 
placed on me. Dr. Garfoyle ; that is how I’m made, I’m a moral 
chameleon. Somehow I always take my color from the people 
that I’m with, at least from the men that I’m with, if I must be 
precise ; I cannot remember that any woman ever had any influ- 
ence over me ; most of them strike me as ridiculous or ill-dressed. 
But I am so good when I’m with you, aud I like to feel good, I 
really do, it’s a fact ; and then you see it’s best for Bruce. He is 
a terrible responsibility for me alone. I’ve not a notion how to 
bring him up. You know he’s not a common boy. He’s like a 
Stradivarius among vulgar violins or fiddles, and beneath my 
fingers he emits shrieks which torture both our nerves ; beneath 
yours he gives forth lovelj^ harmonies. Then, as Mrs. Bratton- 
Fleming has been careful to inform you, I am the family pauper, 
I’m everybody’s poor relation. They allowance me between them ; 
and I’m never out of debt — and debt is worse than doubt, let me 
tell you. Dr. Garfoyle, though the nineteenth century doesn’t think 


84 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


SO — that is one of the many things you have not found out, and 
one of the many vvhicli I know. There, now I liave turned up all 
my cards. Surely it is your turn to speak. Must I tell you what 
to say ? ” 

Dr. Garfoyle’s resolution, though sorely tried, held good. Her 
loveliness was enhanced by the soft, rose-colored light which, 
under her management, had supplanted the harsh yellow glare of 
the curates’ oil lamp, and she was bewitching. He gazed at her 
with entire absorption. 

Yes,” she nodded, “ I know my value.” 

‘‘ When the day comes,” he murmured, ‘‘ in which I permit my- 
self to say all that I have in my heart, I shall not need your prompt- 
ing, Victoria. Believe me, from my very soul the words will flow.” 

“Do you really mean to say that you suppose you can admire 
me more than I admire myself?” she asked with a little incredu- 
lous smile. 

“ Do not try me further,” he entreated ; “ it is for your sake I go. 
At your age the months will pass swiftly which at mine will carry 
the burden of years. After three months, if you will ratify your 
words, for the rest of your life you shall never know debt nor 
loneliness again.” 

“ Do you think,” she responded, “ that I should have said all 
this first if I had not felt the response in your nature ? I know 
you better. Dr. Garfoyle, than you allow yourself to know yourself. 
I am used to studjdng men, but you are used to studying priests 
and curates. It is the man in you I am acquainted with: the priest 
with whom you carefully take counsel in yourself. I do not like 
the spirit of the priest. When you are true to the man in you, you 
are true to your best self ; but you are afraid, and conceive that 
you are most true when you are guided by the cowardly conscience 
of the monk. See, I can be clever, too, though not in reading books. 
My only books are the men I meet, my only manuscripts their man- 
ners toward me.” 

“ Do not try me thus, Victoria, once more I entreat you. You 
exaggerate what I have done for you. You are still under the 
influence of your recent fears ; you want to keep me by j^our side, 
as you would keep Bruce’s late physician. You would perhaps 
marry me ; but it would be to save your boy. Afterward you 


LIVE AND LOVE 


85 


would repent the sacrifice which you had made to your maternal 
fears ; but if after you have recovered from this dread, and have 
resumed your normal ways of life, you welcome me back of your own 
free choice, then you shall find no laggard lover in the man whose 
nature has been dissolved by his love of you until the very life in 
his veins he cannot separate from his thought of you. The love 
of my youth, Victoria, planted fibres in my being which were 
uprooted only with wrenches of agony ; this later love, my love of 
you, is my very life itself. You have bridged the chasm between 
my youth and age ! I owe you more than I can ever repay. 
Choose to see mj^ face again, and the obligation is on my side. 
You cannot know all that you are to me. Now, let me go, I entreat 
you. We shall not meet again here ; I shall have left before you 
are up in the morning ; but we part as though we parted not.” 

Deeply moved, he held her silently one moment in his arms, and 
then put her from him resolutely, and turned to go. Sensitive as 
she was to outward impressions, her bright face grew serious for 
a moment, as though she were assisting at a final service. She 
impulsively tore from her bosom the flowers which she wore there, 
and putting them into his hands, was herself the first to leave the 
room. 


CHAPTER YIII 

LIVE AND LOVE 

Dr. Gaefoyle had not failed to be particularly struck by Mrs. 
Goldenour’s remark that she had no friends among women. 
Naturally he missed the point of the observation, and felt very 
sorry indeed for the other women who had not the inestimable 
privilege of Mrs. Goldenour’s acquaintance. So he turned over in 
his mind those ladies among his friends’ wives in the university, 
for whom he entertained the greatest regard, with a view of right- 
ing this matter. 

First and foremost came Mrs. Gruter and her adopted daughter, 
Helen Keltridge. To the elder of these two ladies he therefore 
wrote, before leaving home the next morning, requesting her to be 


86 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


kind enough, out of her regard for himself, to call upon Mrs. 
Golderiour at St. Amvvell’s Vicarage, during his absence. He care- 
fully explained the circumstances which detained his visitor, and 
he strengthened his appeal by the mention of Mrs. Bratton-Flem- 
ing’s name. It struck him as being only right and seemly, as well 
as kind, that some lady should take Victoria up and befriend her, 
and of course he had not the smallest doubt of their all being 
charmed with her the moment that they really got to know her. 

Mrs. Gruter’s was one of the most familiar figures among the 
older members of Cambridge society. She was the wife of Thomas 
Gruter, M. A., formerly professor of cryptology in the univer- 
sity. For some years now “ Professor Gruter,” as his wife from 
force of habit still called him, had been little more than a lay 
figure. A general decay of all his faculties had overtaken him, 
hastened by the tragic death of his daughter Margaret and of her 
husband Chevington Applewood, and the doctors whispered to 
each other of softening of the brain. He devoted himself chiefly 
to pottering about his garden, and to the care of poultry and 
rabbits ; but his wife, who was many years his junior, retained 
all the admirable qualities which had always distinguished her, 
undimmed by the defeat of fortune, which had wrecked her earlier 
hopes. The shock which had agitated university society when the 
bright young wife, Margaret Applewood, was burned to death, 
was remembered yet ; and if any record were needed of it, there 
was the monument in the college chapel to the memory of her 
husband, who followed her in two years’ time. But this event 
was now six years old, and, save by Mrs. Gruter, and by Chev- 
ington Apple wood’s sister, Helen Keltridge, the wife of Handal 
Keltridge, Fellow and mathematical lecturer of his college, these 
occurrences were at present regarded as belonging to ancient 
history. 

Events move rapidly in a society where individuals are per- 
petually changing, and where thought is quick to engender new 
presentations of ideas in ever varying kaleidoscopic forms. Fresh 
for every day must be the thoughts for the times, like manna, to 
be newly gathered every morning, with no exception in favor of 
any day of rest ; keep them, and they breed worms. So inces- 
santly changing are the fashions in notions that what on Monday 


LIVE AND LOVE 


87 


delighted you by its novelty on Tuesday disgusts you by its com- 
monness and staleness ; nor is the difficulty so much to get a new 
idea as ever to be permitted to keep one when you have got it. 

To Mrs. Gruter and to Helen Keltridge the memory of Cheving- 
ton and of Margaret Applewood was the consecration of their days. 
They lived close together and they made out their daily lives in 
common. So one morning, )ate in November, Helen looked in upon 
her adopted parents as usual, and found Professor Gruter engaged 
in feebly filling an old band-box of his wife’s with hay, for tlie 
accommodation of a new guinea-pig. Slie offered her assistance, 
and was entertained in the intervals by Mrs. Gruter’s perusal of 
the afore-mentioned letter from Dr. Garfoyle with remarks of this 
nature : 

“Now, Helen, pray don’t let him tumble all the stuff about the 
carpet. Put an old table-cloth down, and then attend to this. I 
want you to listen to me.” 

Helen Keltridge hastily shoved the guinea-pig back into the box, 
from which it was escaping, its owner having been apparently 
unable to foresee that if he left the lid open the creature would 
get out. The ex-professor had been a leader of thought once ; 
this was what he had come to. 

“ Helen,” pursued Mrs. Gruter, “ I want to know, have you 
heard of a young wonian named Victoria Goldenour — a colonial, 
fast and a flirt ? Her very name doesn’t sound reassuring. One 
of those women tliat you can’t ever imagine being tied to a regula- 
tion husband. Have you not heard of her? Well, you never are 
good at picking up facts. Why, she dined one night at the Lodge, 
when all the most important folk were there in their best gowns. 
Somebody failed, so they put her in, and she kept them waiting 
half an hour, and then appeared with perfect self-possession, 
dressed like a duchess, and dispensing favors like a queen. Then 
to make up for coming too late, she stayed so long afterward that 
they believed she’d come to stop for good and all. The master’s 
wife told me herself that she had all the men round her until 
eleven, excepting those too old to keep awake. Of course, you 
know, she dropped her then and there.” 

“ Which wouldn’t hurt her much,” said Helen coolly. 

“ Very likely not ; but still, before she could distinguish herself 


88 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


again, her boy fell ill of scarlet fever, and where do you suppose she 
got him taken in ? What man do you imagine, in the whole of this 
ancient and honorable university, was so smitten with the charms 
of the golden one that he placed his house at her disposal as a 
hospital, his very chamber as a fever ward ? Guess ! Well, your 
director. Dr. Garfoyle. It seems that he was so attracted by the 
manners and appearance of this Victorili Goldenour that he has posi- 
tively added her fever-stricken boy to the extraordinary menagerie 
of queer creatures which he keeps to make him feel at home.” 

‘‘ I’m sure it was not for his own sake if he took her in,” 
said Helen positively. 

“ Oh, in that sense certainly not, no one would suspect him of such 
.a thing ; but see here, he asks me to visit her. He paj^s me a com- 
pliment, no doubt, in believing me to be the only woman of my age 
in university society capable of forgetting what is due to herself — 
and he is right, I am capable of it upon occasion ; and I don’t say I 
won’t go ; but isn’t it Irish? Just like their ways, a pig in the 
parlor and the poultry on the front-door steps. I hear he had an 
idiot in the garret, and it happily caught the infection and died, and 
a paralytic and a consumptive upon the second-floor landing, and 
half a dozen budding deacons, and a germinating parson low^r 
down; and nowit seems he has gone into residence at his cathedral 
town, and has actually left her in possession of the premises. Now, 
what do you say to that ? ” 

“ That I will go and call upon her, and will save you the trouble, 
dear mother,” said Helen quietl3^ “ If Dr. Garfoyle really thinks 
her worth taking so much care of, she must be worth our calling 
upon.” 

“ Oh, I’ve not the slightest doubt,” said Mrs. Gruter, more 
moderately, “ that, in spite of all appearances, she is both poor and 
proper. Certainly he mentions Mrs. Bratton-Fleming’s name, and 
of course I knew her well ; but still all families have their failures, 
and I don’t suppose the Flemings can plead that they are excep- 
tions to the rule.” 

“ Dr. Garfoyle is a man of sound and instructed judgment,” said 
Helen with gentle determination, “and what is good enough for 
him is good enough for me.” 

“ And what about the infection ? ” asked Mrs. Gruter. “ If you 


LIVE AND LOVE 


89 


have no children, your sister Ciceley Sil verb ayes has, you must 
remember.” 

‘‘Oh, Ciceley’s children won’t be here till Christmas,” answered 
the younger woman ; “ and, as for me, I see worse cases every day, 
down in the district, than I am likely to see in the vicarage. Now, 
Professor Gruter, I think that that bed is nicely made, and that if 
we take the guinea-pig out carefully, we can safely introduce him 
to it.” 

“Well, guinea-pigs, rabbits, and canaries are bad enough com- 
pany in all conscience,” sighed Mrs. Gruter, “but paralytics, 
paupers, and idiots are worse. Helen, will any woman ever arrive 
at the real comprehension of any man ? Will she ever be able to 
explain satisfactorily their devotion to what they are pleased to 
call facts ? See what it comes to, a guinea-pig is a fact. Poor 
dear ! — I mean Thomas, and not the pig — their immersion in the 
concrete, even at their best ; their subjugation to their senses — 
look at even such a saint as Dr. Garfoyle — their passion for verbal 
accuracy combined with their rampant inconsistencies of conduct; 
their immense conception of their own superiority to all women, 
and their utter ineffectiveness in the hands of the first woman who 
chooses to subjugate them ! Take your friend Dr. Garfoyle, now ; 
the man possesses the tongue of the rhetorician, the learning of 
the erudite recluse, the pen of the cultivated writer, the sanctity 
of the mediaeval saint, together with the complex experience neces- 
sary for guiding his conduct in the nineteenth century ; and yet 
what is the result ? From all that I can hear he has positively 
fallen a victim, at fifty years of age, to a designing widow with a 
pretty face, an empty purse, startling frocks, and impudence to 
match them. The better the man tlie bigger the drop. The 
sinner’s singed and suspicions ; the saint’s sure, and safe to slide.” 

“ Dear mother,” Helen said, “ it amuses you to say these things ; 
but I cannot think it credible of Dr. Garfoyle. He is too calm 
and temperate in action ; too well versed in all the data of society. 
It is surely more likely that popular report has pronounced judg- 
ment rashly and without pausing to discriminate. The judgment 
of the multitude is the coarsest generalization upon earth. Every 
noble soul exceeds its measure.”. 

“The saints will not succeed in ruling either in the church or in 


90 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


the world,” said Mrs. Gruter in reply, “ unless they keep their 
common wits about them ; and your friend Dr. Garfoyle is one who 
should know how to rule men and women too.” 

“ I mean to go and see her, Mrs. Gruter, and then I’ll tell you 
what I think of it,” said Helen Keltridge cautiously. 

Now, Helen had a great regard for Dr. Garfoyle. It was an old 
story, dating from years back, when he had stood her friend in a pain- 
ful crisis of her life ; and her confidence in his judgment was as 
unabated as her affectionate regard. To her he had been a prophet ; 
and she regarded herself as this prophet’s servant. In any cause 
which he undertook, her zeal was stirred to further and to follow 
him. Hence she allowed not a day to pass before she went to pay 
her promised call on his guest. 

She entered the vicarage garden by the gate in the wall, and to 
reach the front door she must pass by the flagged court, where the 
poplars and the aspens now covered the pavement with pale j^ellow 
leaves. Within a stone’s throw was the greenhouse on her right. 
Now, Dr. Garfoyle was fond of his flowers, and he took much 
interest in this same house, wliicli was, in fact, a conservatory of 
considerable size, standing by itself in the garden. It was kept 
well warmed, was filled with brilliant blossoms, and was much 
used by the students as a lounge, where they might smoke at 
leisure. 

Helen Keltridge was not short-sighted, and as she passed this 
pleasant retreat she distinctly saw sitting amid the flowering shrubs 
the figui‘es of a man and woman. Without turning to look directly 
in their faces she could not have identified them afterward, but she 
received a very distinct impression tliat the lady was young, of 
brilliant coloring, and elegantly dressed, and that she was leaning 
back and playing with a spray of Cape jessamine, while a hand- 
some, florid man, in a corresponding wicker chair, large and low, 
leaned toward her, cigar in hand, but not in mouth ; and that it 
was more likely from his attitude that eager words rather than 
smoke were issuing from his lips. 

Mrs. Trupper knew Helen Keltridge well, as one of Dr. Gar- 
foyle’s lady helpers, and she came to the door. ‘‘Yes, Mrs. Gold- 
enour was in,” she said, admitting her. The atmosphere of the 
vicarage drawing-room was new to Helen ; a strange subtle per- 


LIVE AND LOVE 


91 


fume, intensely sweet and penetrating, j^et subdued and indefinable, 
filled the air ; a certain rearrangement of furniture and ornament 
bad been effected ; all traces of the curates’ presence had vanished 
from the room; so had the Japanese umbrella from the fire-place, 
and the missionary box from the table ; a bright fire burned on the 
hearth, before which upon the rug sat the most lovel}^ boy that 
Helen Keltridge thought she had ever beheld. He was fabricating 
a little ladder of twigs, bound with threads of colored worsted, 
turning it cleverly with active, tasteful fingers. 

“A ladder for my toad,” he explained ; “ we keep it in the 
greenhouse, and I am making a ladder for it to climb up and catch 
flies when it can’t reach them ; but Mr. John Pengelley is there 
now talking to mother, and they sent me away; and I’m so afraid 
he’ll step on it, he is so huge and ‘stomping.’ ” 

“You are Mrs. Goldenour’s little boy?” 

“ Yes, I am Bruce, Bruce Goldenour ; and you had better not 
come too near me. I’ve had a fever and I might give it to you, 
though I haven’t got it now.” 

“Mrs. Goldenour is not at home,” said the woman Trupper, 
opening the door, and using an indignant tone, in which there was 
no concealment. The child opened his clear eyes widel}^, and said : 

“ No, mother is not in the house ; but you might go into the 
greenhouse and look at the toad without disturbing them ; he is 
such a beauty, so big and fat, and he is eating flies all the day 
long.” 

“ That is her child,” said Mrs. Trupper, as she showed the visitor 
out. “ It’s not my boy — not my Shadrach, you know, Mrs. Kelt- 
ridge.” 

Mrs. Keltridge said that she was quite aware of the fact, that 
indeed it did not need stating. 

“ No, that boy’s delicate and nervous,” said Mrs. Trupper, “very 
different to the fine coloring of my Shadrach.” 

“ His hair is very beautiful,” said Helen, “ the way it lies in curls 
and rings upon his forehead is quite striking.” 

“ My sister, Mrs. Pye, is vexed about it,” said the jealous mother; 
“ she says she can do nothing with it. You should see Shadrach’s 
now, Mrs. Keltridge ; I give it a turn with the tongs every Sunday, 
and it stands up beautiful.” 


92 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


As Helen again passed the conservatory, the unabashed lady and 
gentleman sat there still, and she went home feeling more anxious 
on Dr. Garfoyle’s account than she had thought possible. 

“Now she is gone ! ” said John Pengelley, turning again eagerly 
to his fair companion. 

“ Who is she, this ‘Mrs. Keltridge’?” said Victoria, holding in 
her hand the card Trupper had presented. 

“ Oh ! a don’s wife. I’m not a university man myself, and I don’t 
admire the breed. I like the man who knows the stock from the 
muzzle end of a gun, and who can mount a horse without the aid of 
his cook with a kitchen chair ! ” Victoria laughed incredulously. 
“ Facts, I assure you. For the rest, she is one of Dr. Garfoyle’s dis- 
trict ladies ; one of his parish adorers, without a doubt. Her hus- 
band’s something in one of the colleges, but I can’t tell you much 
about them. I know her sister better; she is more to my taste. 
She’s the wife of Dr. Silverhayes, and they own the Manor House, 
out our way ; but we don’t see much of them, the}^ live mostly up 
in town ; he’s a well-known doctor. As for the Keltridge, this lady’s 
husband, he’s just a surly don, dry as a stick, and churlish in manner. 
It was said he went out of his mind for a couple of years after their 
marriage, and went off to America and left her in peace ; however 
that may be, they are inseparable now ; instances of ” 

“ ‘ Dull dualitj^’ ‘ monotonous monogamy.’ Is either of those the 
phrase you require ?” asked Victoria sarcastically. 

“ I say, you are sharp. Do leave off being clever,” said John 
ruefully. 

“Well, well,” continued Victoria, “ don’t be jealous of my wits ; 
you wouldn’t know how to use them if you’d got them, you know. 
Tell me some more about Mrs. Keltridge, since I shall have to 
return her call. I don’t suppose she knows much about how to 
make herself agreeable to any husband. These pattern women 
never do. Soul-union with the clergy is the thing they sigh for. 
One and all they are old maids in marriage.” 

John Pengelley lighted his cigar and regarded her with lazy 
admiration. 

“ You ought to have gone in and seen her, you know. She’ll tell 
of us. She must have seen us wlien she passed.” 

“ Yes, I know she did,” answered Victoria ; “ but I shall make it 


LIVE AND LOVE 


93 


all right to-morrow. I saw at a glance that she was far too good 
for you, and I didn’t want her here. I shall go and see her to-mor- 
row, when I have arranged my conscience, my countenance, and 
my costume suitably. The transition from your society to hers 
would have been too abrupt ; I should have felt a hypocrite, and 
I’m not that truly.” 

What are you, Mrs. Goldenour ? I wish you would tell me ? ” 
asked her companion earnestly. 

** A mirror for men’s minds,” she answered. ‘‘ I give you back 
yourselves softened and refined and beautiful, and you fall in love 
just with yourselves in me.” 

“ And what do you fall in love with in us ? ” he asked rashly, 
with a bold glance of undisguised admiration. 

“ W/ie?i I love you, then I will tell you that,” she answered. 
“ Until you have heard me say ‘ I love you,’ do not dare to ask me 
such a question again. Why, I haven’t even said ‘ I like you’ yet.” 

He reddened and threw away the cigar. 

If you haven’t said it, you’ve acted it ! ” he exclaimed angrily. 

For answer she returned him the box of bonbons, which lay 
untouched in her lap, and rose to depart. He detained her eagerl3^ 

“ Listen to me, Victoria,” he said. “ You shall not go until 
you’ve given me a fair chance of a hearing once for all. I shall 
not worry you. You know I’m not that sort of man ; and I’ll be 
your friend until you change your mind or see your way. I am 
an honorable man ! but I want you for my wife, and I cannot 
quite understand what’s against me as a husband. Why not take 
me out and out? But if you cannot see your way, well, I will 
wait ; you need never fear any embarrassment from me, I’m not a 
sentimental, selfish brute ; you have been very kind to give me 
your sweet company, and I will wait, if I must ; but where’s the 
rub? What’s wrong with me?” 

“ Oh, yes, you have been very good and kind,” said Victoria, 
relenting visibly, ‘‘ and when I get away and think it over, I may 
know why it is it would not do. If I could tell you, I rather think 
that I could take you, John Pengelley ; the fact is that you would 
not understand. I hardly do myself ; but I think that it is this — 
if I were quite sure I had not got a soul, then I would marry you, 
John Pengelley.” 


94 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


Mr. Pengelley indulged in a frank burst of laughter. 

‘‘Upon my word,” he said, “ they have been guilty of converting 
you down here. They have doubtless been inducing you to barter 
the certain comfort of the present for the problematical gain of a 
very doubtful future. Am I, then, the discredited present ? Capi- 
tal ! But I happen to remember how they sent you back to me, 
shivering and sad, your sweet eyes wet with tears, 3^our adorable 
figure swathed in a dripping, dingy cloak ; and I knew how to 
comfort you. Be warned, child, take my motto, ‘ Live and love.’ 
If this must even be the end of the pleasure I haVe had in you, 
and — let me add it — you in me, surely it was worth the trouble of 
our entrance here. But why should this be the end ? Think 
what pleasure you and I might find in life together. You have 
been playing with me — yes, I know it — and I have enjoyed the 
game ; but I am serious now, nay, desperately in earnest. Take 
me, and I shall know no wish beyond. Depend upon it, Victoria, 
in spite of all they say down here, there is a heaven of enjoyment 
upon earth if you take it as it comes, and change it when it goes. 
Nay, do not look at me with memory in your ej^es, you shall not. 
I will not be murdered by your past ; an English government 
doesn’t sanction the suttee. I have never seen the trouble yet, 
nor do I believe that such exists, which may not be alleviated by 
what are stupidly styled ‘ creature comforts.’ Come ! I am rich 
and you love luxuries, let me have the pure joy of providing them 
for you and yours. There’s a lot of rot talked by sentimentalists 
and pietists all up and down the land, and old women and ugly 
women always abound to cry in concert with their pessimistic 
utterances ; but the fact remains that so long as one has youth and 
energy as a man, or youth and beauty as a Avoman, one has only to 
be true to Nature and she herself will find us consolation.” 

“ So you have your system of philosophy if you are not a don,” 
said Victoria, smiling, when he paused for breath. 

“ Therein lies the sum of all human wisdom — that is all the law 
and the prophets,” he continued eagerly. “ Be true to your own 
nature. I therefore consult my own happiness as a man by follow- 
ing the bent of my own desires. I like a good wine and I drink it, 
a good cigar and I smoke it, a good dinner and I eat it ; but as I 
should be nothing better than a brute if I pursued these joys alone. 


LIVE AND LOVE 


95 


since they only acquire their fullest zest when enjoyed in company, 
I fulfil my destiny when I adore you ; in your presence I reach my 
highest state of perfection. I shall never be better nor greater 
than it lies in your power to make me with a word. The worm 
may be my heir ; what matter, so long as we have not missed our 
present good in some mistaken pursuit of a vain mirage ! ” 

“ But have you no soul, John Pengelley ? ” she enquired, as she 
reached out her hand for the bonbons again, and put one into her 
mouth. 

“As an individual man, none,” he answered stoutly. Woman 
is the soul of man. Supply my lack, I do entreat you.” 

“ All life is so difficult,” she murmured to herself, as she sucked 
the sugared cream thoughtfully. 

“ Not at all. It’s perfectly easy. Live and love. Come to me. 
I swear I’ll take care of you and of your boy. We will make the 
little chap strong among us : he shall have a fine country life, plenty 
of breezy fields to range over, good milk to drink, his choice of a 
dog, and a pony of his own.” 

“ Hadn’t j'^ou better bring the cow here to show me? ” she asked 
mischievously. What wonder the poor fellow looked annoyed? 
“I have told you, John Pengelley, if I were quite sure I had no 
soul and Bruce no intellect, we would accept your offer with thanks ; 
as I remain doubtful upon both these points, we had better keep 
away. We certainly cannot accept your mother’s kind invitation.” 

“ It’s all the cursed doing of these amemic parsons,” he shouted 
angrily ; “ they’ve spoilt 3^011 among them.” 

“As this is Dr. Garfoyle’s greenhouse, and as I am his guest, I 
will not permit you to say a word against him,” she replied warmly. 

He looked rebuked. 

“At least,” he said, “tell me where you are going, for I don’t 
suppose you intend to remain here?” 

“I go to Paris, eri route for Nice, with my boy next week. I 
wish the child to winter in a better climate. I have friends in 
Paris, whose views of life are artistic. I like varieties in views as 
well as in costumes, and I seek both there.” 

“ But how about the funds ? ” he enquired with embarrassment, 
the ruddy color deepening in his tanned cheeks ; “you will possi- 
bly need ” 


96 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


“ I shall need nothing but what I have already got, and if I had 
occasion to borrow of either of my kind friends, I should, frankly, 
prefer the canon’s check to the squire’s.” 

“ Why, may I ask ? ” he said with evident anger. 

“Because tlie canon’s check would bear a celestial countersign. 
It would be honored up above ; while yours I could never hope to 
repay. No, I will not have anything further from you, save the 
memory of your past kindness ; and now, if we have done talking, 
perhaps you had better go away. Your horses will tire of stand- 
ing at the gate so long.” 

He made a movement of impatience. 

“ May I not come again before you leave ? ” 

“ In no case, unless you desire to see Mrs. Trupper. You will 
not find me if you come. This little episode is ended. Say we 
have enjoyed it : it is time ‘to change our pleasures.’ Good-by, 
John Pengelley. Your dinner will console you : you told me so, 
you know.” 

After this the words that Mr. John Pengelley uttered as he 
departed were fit neither for children’s nor for curates’ ears to 
hear. 


CHAPTER IX 

A TOSS UP 

Victoria stood before her glass, putting upon her head an 
exquisite thing in lace and flowers, preparatory to returning Mrs. 
Keltridge’s inconvenient call. She felt dull. Dr. Garfoyle might 
be quite middle-aged, almost elderly indeed ; yet his presence lent 
a motive to the minutes, which were rendered monotonous and 
meaningless by his absence. She welcomed the interruption of 
Bruce, bounding in with a telegram in his hand. 

“ How nice of you, boy, to bring mother a telegram ! It may 
mean something has happened ; the worst of it is there are so few 
pleasant things that can happen at all ; the choice is small.” 

“Well, is this a good one or a bad one, mother ?” the child 
asked, watching her anxiously. 


A TOSS UP 


97 


“That is more than I can tell you, Bruce,” she said, flinging 
down the paper. “ Your great-grandfather. Sir Victor Bruce, is 
dead, but whether that’s good or bad for himself or for us, who 
knows? Not I. It may cost us a hundred and fifty a year,” she 
continued, taking the child into her confidence, whether he under- 
stood or not, according to the unwise way of widowed mothers, 
“ or it may exalt us to the proud position of independent legatees. 
Your great-grandfather has always shown a certain interest in you, 
boy, and you are his only living male representative ; he sent a 
hundred pounds when you were ill.” 

“ And did I drink it all in medicine ? ” asked the child ruefully. 

“Not quite. There’s one bright penny left. You may have it. 
There it is.” 

“ Could you make it two halfpennies, mother, that I might give 
Shadrach one? He is sitting on the floor with me before the din- 
ing-room fire with silkworms crawling all over him, because the 
mulberry leaves are dead, and they fall sick on lettuce leaves.” 

“Not I, Bruce. Run off now, I’m going out to pay a call. 
This death is a nuisance,” she said to herself as she descended the 
stairs ; “ now we must wait where we are until I learn our fate. I 
shall have to marry in order to support that child, if we are for- 
gotten.” 

So lifting one foot in hope and dropping the other in fear, 
Victoria carried her handsome garments through the town, across 
the college grounds and by the river bridge, till she reached Mrs. 
Keltridge’s abode. Helen Keltridge sat alone in her drawing-room 
when the visitor was announced. Her husband was busied in 
some distant college library. She was not slow to notice that Mrs. 
Goldenour was of a wholly different type from the women — wives 
of M. A.’s chiefly — by whom she lived surrounded : they possessed 
a confidence of manner, based upon their husbands’ achievements 
in academic arenas, wholly foreign to the pretty air of diffidence at 
present displayed by this captivating intruder. 

Victoria Goldenour had only herself to depend upon, only li^rself 
to recommend herself. The academic dames by whom she was 
looked down upon in Cambridge society, had their husbands’ 
places in a Tripos List, a given number of years ago, as a basis for 
their pretensions. They proudly felt themselves to be ennobled by 
7 


98 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


the quality of their husbands’ brains. She, the independent 
daughter of the Antipodes, cared as little for all their petty distinc- 
tions as she did for the aristocratic claims of her own and her late 
husband’s families. How a person dressed, looked, and talked was 
what Victoria cared for, and for little more. Surely an approxima- 
tion toward a higher standard, in that it was self-reliant. 

At present Victoria bent over her teacup, and with a charming 
air of deference to the opinion of a superior person, she explained 
to Mrs. Keltridge her sense of indebtedness to Dr. Garfoyle, and 
her desire to find some suitable expression for her feelings. Mrs. 
Keltridge replied that she too shared that same burden of grati- 
tude ; and that she held that by serving those whom he cared 
for. Dr. Garfoyle might best himself be served. Then Victoria 
told the tale of the paralyzed woman whom he had asked her to 
take care of ; and who had mistaken her for a real live angel, 
caught and sent down to blow away her doubts ; so monstrous was 
her estimate of her own deserts. 

“Naturally I imagined,” she said, “that when she found me out 
she would never make it up with Heaven again. Gn the contrary 
— who would have credited it ? — she was simply dissolved in 
ecstasies of gratitude to the Almighty for giving her a constantly 
recurrent angel all to herself to tend her personally. She veritably 
believes that I descend diurnally from a higher sphere to feed her 
with gruel ; and all because she is so deserving and I smell so 
sweet ! ” 

“ There are many here far cleverer than poor Mrs. Pettit,” an- 
swered Helen, “ who estimate the value of their own faith so highly 
that they demand payment in the same coin as the price of its 
purchase.” 

“‘The poor dear little flea was hungry, and so God made me to 
be a dinner for him’ — my boy Bruce said that, one day, Mrs. Kelt- 
ridge, wdien he was younger and possibly wiser than he is now. 
It’s a pretty story, with a neat application. I make you a present 
of it for your Cambridge dinner-parties.” 

Helen laughed, but before she could continue the subject Victoria 
had abruptly changed it. 

“May I talk freely to you?” she said, “or are you going to be 
shocked because I cannot be conventional ? I have been very 


A TOSS UP 


99 


lonely always. It has been my own fault; I have never cared enough 
about other women, nor considered how they thought ; but now I 
have come to a point when it would interest me to learn how you, 
for instance, who are evidently a friend of his, look at Dr. Gar- 
foyle. Did you never think of marrying him, Mrs. Keltridge ? ” 

“ I was married long before I knew him,” answered Helen 
shortly. 

“Well, but have you never looked at him and considered what 
sort of a husband he would make ?” Victoria asked, leaning forward 
with childlike gravity in her low chair. “ Doesn’t one always look 
at men in that light? I do.” 

“No,” said Helen briefly; “I look upon them as friends.” 

“Dear me, what’s the good of that ?” enquired Victoria, with 
apparent innocence ; then, with a little puzzled smile, she quickly 
asked, “ Mrs. Keltridge, tell me now, and do not be offended, what 
gain has love brought you — you personally, I mean ? ” 

“ Love,” said Helen, rather to herself than to her questioner, “ I 
have often thought, has lessons which transcend its gifts. It has 
taught me many things.” 

“ Chiefly how to suffer,” flashed out Victoria, with one of the 
sudden gleams of insight which characterized her quick nature. 

“Perhaps all things in life that are worth possessing are the 
purchase of our pain,” replied Helen. 

“ Not a bit of it ! Don’t you believe that,” said Victoria con- 
fidently. “In a common, vulgar way, of course, it may be true ; 
Bruce is the dearest thing that I possess on earth, and, of course, 
in a certain sense it was true of him ; but it was not true of my 
beautiful young husband. There was no silence, no reserve in all 
our love. It was perfect ; living, throbbing, pulsing with the 
breaths of our strong young lives. We had no fear of each other ; 
we never dreaded criticism from each other. I was sure that all 
that I did was perfect in his eyes as I was myself, and all that he 
did was good and lovable in mine. He gave me five years of 
absolute, pure gladness, unspoiled by any darker background. Until 
the moment that he lay dying at my feet, he never brought to me 
one single hour of pain. No ; I believe in love, and life, and joy, 
quite disassociated from any awful gain of misery.” 

“ And yet you would marry again ? ” questioned Helen. 


100 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


“Naturally ; we always agreed that we would do so. We told 
it to each other between two kisses on the deck of the steamship 
Cassandra, in the Bay of Naples, on a moonlight night, when all 
the sea ran and rippled with gold, and we sat melted together in 
the mysterious shining haze beneath one covering on a deck lounge. 
We agreed to set each other free if death came between us. Frank 
would have done it long ago, I know, had he been in my place. 
Dear fellow, he was always so unselfish. Either he is dead, quite 
dead, and it doesn’t matter what I do, or what becomes of me ; or 
if he is alive, why, then, dear Mrs. Keltridge, I am very sure that 
Love and he play comrades yet. Would I have him wait for me ? 
I could not be so cruel ! I have been selfish, as it is, to hold him 
a prisoner in my heart so long.” 

“Are you quite a heathen, do you think, Mrs. Goldenour?” asked 
Helen gently. 

“ No, I believe I am chiefly classic, dear Mrs. Keltridge,” she 
replied. 

This way of looking at things struck Helen as so novel that she 
was not ready to reply. 

“And it is not,” went on Victoria, putting a scented morsel of 
muslin to her eyes, “ as though, if I married Dr. Garfoyle, I should 
be considering myself, you see. After the love that I have known, 
what could such an experience be to me ? First, I should marry 
him for Bruce’s sake, it would be very good for him ; secondly, to 
prove my gratitude, and to set my first love free ; thirdly, it might 
make me good to sacrifice myself to the highest end I see. Onl}'^ 
I should want to play the fool sometimes. We all do, you know. 
Oh, I beg your pardon, I can well believe you never do — and I fear 
that Dr. Garfoyle might object to that.” 

“Then why not try Mr. John Pengelley?” asked Helen 
satirically. 

“ My digestion would be unequal to the post,” Victoria replied 
demurely. “ I fear I should lose my complexion and grow dys- 
peptic as his wife. I could not live on ‘ Fondants ’ ever after. 
Can’t you understand, Mrs. Keltridge, that I really meant to do a 
good action in marrying Dr. Garfoyle, to show my gratitude, and 
to give my boy a good guardian ; and that as for me,” she added 
plaintively, “it might as well be he as another, now.” 


A TOSS UP 


101 


Helen was touched, in spite of herself. 

It was just this unexpectedness, this entire absence of the artificial 
reserves by which most women surround themselves, which made 
Victoria so fascinating. Helen was conscious of a growing interest 
in her companion’s unconventional, yet evidently genuine modes of 
speech. Her freshness was that of a pure spring morning, the 
expression of lier emotions Avas absolutely unartificial ; it was also 
abundantly manifest that she meant Avhat she said when slie 
expressed her conviction that she owed her child’s life to Dr. Gar- 
foyle’s care, and that she was anxious to find the best form for 
expressing her gratitude. 

“ Might one not bring into his life,” she questioned, ‘‘ all those 
elements in which it has been lacking ? Might one not teach his 
cramped, infolded senses to spread themselves forth like sea 
anemones that have been left withered and dry, reviving when the 
fresh salt tides pour over them ? Say, shall I pay him back that 
way for all he has done for me ? You answer, you know him 
best.” 

“ The idea is so foreign to my way of thinking in connection with 
Dr. Garfoyle,” answered Helen ; “but yet I can see that there is truth 
in your criticism ; he has undoubtedly given scope to his emotional 
nature only in the region of aesthetic religious symbolism. Mar- 
riage would be to him a sacrament.” 

Victoria jumped up, put down her teacup, and clapped her 
hands. 

“ There, now,” she said to her astonished acquaintance, “ haven’t 
I brought you to the point ? And what is a sacrament, I Avonder, 
but a lovely sign of some inner transcending beauty; and if one per- 
son brings the inner perfection and the other the outer attraction, 
have you not your sacramental notion very fitly represented?” 

Helen answered : 

“ ITou proceed along the lines of outer perfection to your fuller 
development, he radiates his inner harmony, giving it outer form 
hitherto denied it, by your aid ; is that your notion — to complete 
his existence?” 

“Yes,” said Victoria, “to teach liim, in return for that which 
he has done for me, all that he is ignorant of, to teach him the 
value of pleasure.” 


102 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


“ But, excuse me,” said Helen, “ how about that other gentle- 
man — Mr. John Pengelley was it not — with whom I saw you 
yesterday ? I should say he scarcely needs the same system 
of education, and yet you appeared to be administering it to 
him.” 

“Ah, that is the worst of me,” said Victoria candidly, “that 
I am not consistent. I am opalescent ; I change my color accord- 
ing to my environment. I have got all I have now said out of 
your mind far more than out of my own, in the shape in which I 
have stated it. It was not there when I entered your room ; nor 
will it be in time to come, even if I attempt to carry it out. But 
what is yours and what is mine I could not tell you, any more than 
I could tell you how I shall act in the end. I am just a moral 
mirror, I reflect the minds of those I am attracted by ; and I like 
you, Mrs. Keltridge” — she said this, holding out her pretty hands 
impulsively — “ thougli you are grave and sensitive and have clearly 
suffered strangely in your life” — Victoria was mindful of John 
Pengelley’s tale when she made this observation. “ No, do not be 
afraid, I shall not ask you questions which you would not answer 
if you could ; but your waj'^s of looking at life are those of the 
women of your rank and class ; conventions cloud your judg- 
ment ; a narrow training restricts your faculties and uses to the 
man you love, and seek to serve, whether as wife or friend. Eman- 
cipate yourself, I entreat you, my sweet acquaintance — I dare not 
call you ‘friend,’ lest you should deny me the right to do so. Yet, 
listen; see, I have got up to go, we shall not meet again. My debts 
here are paid by somebody ; I take it by our mutual friend ; my 
grandfather is dead, and I only wait in England to learn how I am 
affected by his will. Think of me kindly if you can, for, indeed, if 
I am not as good and true as you, yet the man that I shall marry 
will be twice the man that such sweet saints as you could make 
him. I too believe in sacramentalism, as you tell me Dr. Garfoyle 
does ; and I would surround the symbolism of the senses with all 
that music, beauty, art, the religious sentiment can bring ; for the 
gospel of the senses is a true gospel yet ! That is my last word to 
you, who have despised it.” 

“You have the artistic temperament, I the dramatic,” answered 
Helen, smiling, as Victoria took her leave. “ I thank you for pro- 


A TOSS UP 


103 


viding me with a new and strange study, wherein I recognize our 
diversity and yet acknowledge our affinity. Good-by.” 

“ Well, and what is the ‘golden one ’ like, good or bad?” asked 
Mrs. Gruter, when Helen was dining with her and Professor Gruter 
that evening. “ So very good that she might be very bad, perhaps, 
eh ? Is that it ? ” 

“She is a very attractive creature,” said Helen thoughtfully, “a 
woman whom it is impossible to know without feeling strongly 
about. A man could do nothing else with her except fall in love 
with her ; she was not made for anything else that I can see. Yet 
she is perfectly good in the ordinary sense of the term, almost inno- 
cent ; only it is a wise innocence and an unconventional innocence ; 
still you feel she has her own canons of right and wrong ; her own 
standard of taste, but anyone who expects her to conform to the 
one in vogue wherever she may happen to be, will probably be 
disappointed. She has not acquired the art of connecting wrong 
with what most women have been artificially brought up to regard 
as wrong because it is inexpedient. She knows that her power lies 
in her own loveliness, just as another woman knows that her power 
lies in her intellect or her wealth, and she states it freely. She 
uses her beauty as a gift which she is not at all disposed to hide. 
There must have been many more women like her in the olden 
days, before women had acquired a sixth sense, not of what is 
wrong, but of what is proper and what is not proper.” 

“ Just so,” said Mrs. Gruter, poking the fire over which they sat, 
while the professor slept upon a couch ; “ she seems to me to date 
back to Adam and Eve in the garden. Unfortunately, Eve would 
certainly have been proctorized if she were to have reappeared here 
now, and I hear that your fair friend did, at any rate, attract the 
attention of the junior marshal, she made herself so conspicuous 
by standing in the aisle when the bishop preached on Sunday. But 
what is she going to do ? To earn a soul by marrying a divinity 
professor, and to convert him in exchange to the ‘ Gospel of the 
Senses’! Good Heavens! are we at the end of ‘this skeptical 
nineteenth century,’ as the magazines call it, and do we hear such 
bargains actually debated ? And to leave her early husband free 
to contract celestial unions in the skies ! Helen, she raves ! ” 

“ No,” said Helen, “ she is quite sincere.” 


104 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


“ Well, women used to sell their souls, or we’ve been told so, in 
the Middle Ages, to sundry forms of fiends ; surely it is reserved for 
these their daughters to redeem them by intermarrying with the 
saints ; that is the best that we can say. But, pray, when does 
this precious person go away ? ” asked Mrs. Gruter. 

“ She leaves for Paris on Tuesday,” said Helen. 

“ Ah, yes,” observed Mrs. Gruter comfortably, “ I could have 
told you she was going to Paris. I could have taken a ‘ Cook’s’ 
ticket for her there, with her boy and maid and a mountain of 
luggage, without asking her destination. No doubt Paris is her 
Eden, and Monte Carlo her Paradise. There we may hope she will 
stay and flourish.” 

‘‘ I think you are too severe upon her, mother,” said Helen, as 
she rose to depart. 

“ Not I, my daughter ; but you are sure to be made the confi- 
dante, if not the dupe, of many an Eve, before you learn the wis- 
dom of allowing no other woman more liberty of speech or action 
than you claim for yourself. Do that, and you will be safe.” 

Then Helen Keltridge put her things on and went home by the 
sodden, dripping pathways, where her footfall, resting on couches 
of yellow autumn leaves, made no sound as she passed along, mus- 
ing silently on Victoria Goldenour and on her ways of looking at 
life, and contrasting them as fairly as possible with her own, not 
entirely to Victoria’s disadvantage after all. 

Mrs. Goldenour did leave the vicarage, but not until a week 
later than she had intended, for Sir Victor Bruce’s death delayed 
her departure. That worthy old gentleman had, it seemed, done 
his duty by his great-grandson, and had left him an ample fortune. 
But, apparently mistrusting his mother’s discretion, the boy’s 
uncle on the other side. Sir Peregrine Goldenour, was left, to the 
exclusion of Victoria, the child’s sole guardian and trustee. 

This was a terrible blow to Victoria. She could not bear the 
Peregrine Goldenours, and it must be admitted the feeling was 
mutual. She would even have chosen that her darling should be 
poor, if poverty meant dependence upon herself. She would now 
be more than ever at the mercy of her husband’s family; they 
must pay her for Bruce’s education such sums as they might think 
proper, while they would have the specious excuse for keeping her 


A TOSS UP 


105 


perpetually short of cash, that it was all accumulating for Bruce’s 
majority. It was hard of the old man only to regard the hoy as 
his deceased son’s grandson, and to refuse to recognize his mother’s 
rights also. She was glad he was dead, and she hoped he was 
uncomfortable wherever he might he placed. That Bruce would 
be a rich man when he came of age was, no doubt, a consolatory 
reflection, but it seemed about as remote as the thought of heaven, 
and as inapplicable to present circumstances. But that shillings 
and sovereigns were to be doled out to her for the next thirteen 
years at Sir Peregrine Goldenour’s sole will and pleasure was too 
aggravating an arrangement to be accepted tranquilly. She must 
certainly marry someone, in order to provide for herself now, and 
to disconcert them. 

She stood before her glass, arrayed in a pleasant tea-gown; her 
little son stood by her side patting the bows of ribbon on her skirt 
with his cliildish fingers, and furtively admiring his pretty mother, 
whose eyes slione so brightly, and whose cheeks had a warm, rosy 
flush like a babe’s aroused from slumber, and impatient of superior 
control over the conditions of its natural existence. 

‘‘ Where’s the bright penny I gave you the other day, Bruce ? ” 
she asked. “ I want it to toss up ; go and fetch it. Heads Dr. Gar- 
foyle, tails John Pengelley,” she murmured, as the boy departed. 

“ lll^'ow, Bruce, attend,” slie said, as the little fellow, panting with 
his run, handed her the coin. “ I shall want you to observe care- 
fully where the penny goes and to pick it up. Now then, mind ; 
heads the canon, tails the squire.” 

But the vicarage boards were old, and the room was scantily 
furnished ; there were only strips of carpet by the beds. Tlie 
sliining copper fell and rolled, disappearing beneath Bruce’s bed. 
The child pursued it, wriggling his flat, lithe body into the 
narrow space. 

‘‘ It’s rolling edgeways, mother, oh, so fast ! You didn’t toss 
properly — women can’t. Oh ! it has gone into my dear little 
mouse’s hole, and will frighten him so. It will fall upon his dear 
little head, just as he is wishing his babies good-night, and he will 
wonder what harm he has done.” 

“ Then if it has gone down the mouse-hole, it is neither one nor 
the other,” said Victoria to herself, in purring tones. And she 


106 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


took a candle, pushed the bed aside, and, stooping down, peered into 
the darkness. Bruce lay flat on the floor beside her, his fair rings 
of hair mingling with her burnished chevelure, his eyes gleaming 
as they gazed down into the dusky aperture, in his eager solicitude 
as to the feelings of the mouse whose domesticities had thus been 
made the sport of human vicissitudes. 

It’s quite gone, mother,” he said. ‘‘ What a pity. Now the 
mouse knows more than you do, and he will never tell you what 
he knows. What were you going to do it for ? Shall I borrow 
you another penny ? ” 

But Victoria jumped up, and pushing back the furniture glee- 
fully, caught hold of her boy and danced with him round the room ; 
exclaiming, in the intervals of the mad whirl when she stopped 
perforce for breath, and caught the child up in her arms : 

“ The Mouse Tower on the Rhine, Bruce ; do you remember 
whom we met there? No, you were too young. And he has a 
villa at Nice, I know. The portent is clear and conclusive. Adieu, 
Dr. Garfoyle,” and she kissed her fingers to the east. “ Good-by, 
John Pengelley,” and she blew a salute to the north. ‘‘Live 
Brabazon-Farnaby ! ” and she gracefully bowed her head to the 
south. 


CHAPTER X 

A MAN AND A BROTHER 

Those who had only seen Dr. Garfoyle in the simple vicarage of 
St. Amwell’s had not made full acquaintance with the man. To be 
known at his happiest he must be visited at the canon’s house in the 
close. It was in this spacious dwelling-place, dominated by the 
architectural glories of the cathedral, that he felt himself really at 
home. The houses stood in the midst of stretches of velvet lawns, 
bordered by oval courts or quaint flower-gardens, while pleasant 
meadows surrounded them, whose waters fed a sparkling stream, 
the course of which was outlined far below by willows delicately 
sketched against a blue-gray sky. Above the stately elms, 
tenanted by their citizens the rooks, rose the glorious fabric of the 


A MAN AND A BROTHER 


107 


cathedral, roof over roof, spire above spire, each differentiated from 
its neighbor by some peculiar glory of its own. 

Here upon a rising eminence, but little lower than that which 
the cathedral occupied, stood ranged the houses of the close, all 
of gray stone, ancient, solid, and dignified. Dr. Garfoyle’s w’as 
clothed in ivy, from paving-stone to gray slated roof ; and above 
the ivy in autumn days the crimson fingers of the Virginia creeper 
flung blood-red tendrils everywhere. In the soft mellow light of a 
fading afternoon, in the chill month of February, their grip of the 
old house covered the whole of its venerable face with a delicate 
tracery of snow, lodged there by its aid. 

As Dr. Garfoyle stood upon his own door-step, preparatory to 
crossing the courtyard to the cathedral, the whole of its western 
fa9ade fronted him. From base to apex of golden cross, he lifted 
his eyes in entire content. On buttress and parapet the silvery 
streaks of snow lay in level lines, marking three distinct altitudes 
in the vast column of stone ; its imposing walls here and there 
streaked with shadowy patches of greener light, where the mosses 
and lichens had grown in sheltered corners so luxuriantly with the 
lapse of years, that they wore an autumnal mantle yet, despite the 
encroachments of the snow. 

Through the open doorway, from his post of observation. Dr. 
Garfoyle could catch a glimpse now and then of the sombre stained- 
glass windows of the transepts and could note a handful of solitary 
worshippers moving across the central aisle, beneath the fretted 
glories of the majestic roof. Here it was that his external sur- 
roundings most fitly mirrored the veritable truths of the man’s 
nature. Here was the shrine of his own soul, the spot where all 
the mystic side of his temperament sought and found its satisfac- 
tion. Here he enjo 3 "ed not merely a restful dwelling-place, but an 
antechamber wherein he waited for the eternal. Here the daily 
sound of prayer and musical service was to him absolutely harmoni- 
ous. And the course of day and night, measured by the cathedral 
chimes, fed the vitalizing stream of strenuous endeavor by which 
he sought to stem the torrent of human misery and crime which 
constantly flowed around him. 

Attracted by the elaborate nature of a ritual which he prized, 
less for the gratification of the aesthetic sense than for the inner 


108 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


symbolism which inspired its beauties ; uplifted by the harmonies 
of musical sound reverberating in the dim spaces of the cathedral 
aisles, he often lingered alone after the last worshipper had de- 
parted, in this spot consecrated by the records of ages and by the 
incense of the prayers of centuries. 

Here amid the glories of early English architecture, in these 
solemn aisles thickly set with clustered pillars, he rose above the 
sordid realities of his external experience. Here he assimilated the 
beauty of his environment. All that was artistic, cultivated, 
aesthetic in his many-sided nature here found its manifestation. 
Here the infinite and external seemed to flow perennially around 
him, uplifting him on the flood-tides of Divine energy. Here he 
found the mysterious past replete with consecrated association. 
Suddenly, and to him quite unexpectedly on this special occasion, 
the music of the organ again awoke. The player was a pupil of 
the organist, a highly sensitive, gifted being, who, seeking the 
same solitude with Dr. Garfoyle, gave to both their solitary souls 
one melodious volume of expression. 

In the dim receding heights of vaulted roofs, magnified indefi- 
nitely by distance and obscurity, invisible pathways seemed to 
stretch out into the illimitable ; the echoes of choral song, the 
resonance of musical tones, the prayers of pure souls in all ages, 
mysteriously reanimated by the living voices of the present, 
mingled with the clouds and mists of fading day, till to Dr. Gar- 
foyle’s inner apprehension the whole cathedral became livingly, in- 
teriorly alive with spiritual emanations. Here, for him, as for the 
great master of Italian song, the whole material imagery became 
indwelt with spiritual significance, divinely symbolical in its details 
as in its entirety. Born in the clear avenues of spiritual sense these 
symbols took shape before him with startling spontaneity, seeming 
to obey in their production some law which eluded his intellectual 
grasp. Here his inner eyes had been opened and he had fre- 
quently experienced ecstasies of the spiritual sense such as no 
tongue could dare to tell. He had learned things which, since he 
knew he must have disbelieved them if they had been told him 
even by some angelic messenger, he never communicated to others ; 
things learned only by the testimony of an inner illumination, 
which extinguished doubt. With amaze of thought he found 


A MAN AND A BROTHEE 


109 


himself lapped low in peace — a peace in which there was no ques- 
tioning. Yet Victoria Goldenour proposed to teach this man the 
way to pleasure ! 

Nature, too, hung with lovely living pictures of herself the 
hidden presence chambers of his secret consciousness. Here he 
revived his early youth ; and at times he had been uplifted, so 
corporeally accompanying his thoughts as to have been physically 
renewed. He had beheld the everlasting hills dressed anew in all 
the colors that they wore to his unclouded vision as a child ; in 
green valleys, where streams of limpid water flowed by banks of 
odorous violets crowned with dew, he had been laid. He had heard 
the voices of fresh incoming tides, had breathed the elixir of pure 
morning airs. Here memories, sunk deeply in his mind, awoke, of 
vanished dawns and sunsets, of the wash and ripple of the waves 
that kissed his feet in childhood, of the scent of early blossoms, 
and the breaking of the buds in long past Mays. These restored 
impressions of vanished, yet perpetual springs, touched the nerves 
even of outer sense with thrills of unforgotten joys. With rapture 
he recognized that he stood indeed beneath uncovered heavens, 
companioned by the viewless spirits of the earth and skies ; and 
even while his bodily eyes beheld the torments of sin and of 
deformity, and his hands ministered to the lowest necessities of the 
sad scum of society, he had been fain to cry aloud, with inward 
triumph, The earth is full of the glory of the Lord.” 

These visions, or vigils, left their trace indelibly imprinted on his 
delicate and all-embracing sensibility, till every word and thought 
and deed seemed to be quickened by them ; and from the mere 
touch of his hand, and the earnest glance of his eye, when he 
returned to a common life, there went forth a curiously benignant 
power to heal and bless. 

No mystic this, active only in his dreams. It was through ways 
of death and of despair that the corroding sorrows of his soul had 
brought him to this luminous table-land, whereon he stood con- 
sciously, with one foot in the dust and mire of earth among the 
objects whom he served so indefatigably, the other planted on 
the threshold of eternity. 

Indeed the measure in which he found himself at any time 
capable of putting forth divine force was conditioned by the fulness 


110 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


of this inner vision. He realized that the moral states of those 
he came in contact with, and even the physical, through the inter- 
action of sensitive nervous centres, were distinctly affected by his 
own spiritual condition ; and that one human being should thus 
seek to “ sanctify himself ” for the good of others with whom he 
was about to come into practical relationship, was a thought which 
abidingly and strongly governed his hidden mind. 

For himself. Dr. Garfoyle demanded of the illumination which 
transiently visited him, not the shaping of thought into concrete or 
contracted dogma, but its conversion into active deeds of practi- 
cal service for his fellows. Hence St. AmwelPs Vicarage was, 
under his influence, the heart of the parish which surrounded it — 
a heart which beat incessantly in sympathy with the abject and 
the forlorn ; a heart ever ready to receive in its comforting 
embrace the human wreckage stranded by the faults of constitu- 
tion or of circumstance, or by the failure of society to protect the 
weak. Mystical hypotheses Dr. Garfoyle accepted in so far only 
as they immediately ultimated in effective and beneficial represen- 
tation, which should have a quantitive value for the bodies of men, 
equally with, and in the same region with, the facts of analytical 
science. 

The young musician ceased playing, extinguished the lights by 
the organ, and quitted the building ; then Dr. Garfoyle too be- 
thought himself of the lateness of the hour, and followed him 
forth into the darkness. He had a private key of one of the lesser 
doors which opened toward the canons’ houses. The buildings of 
the cathedral already loomed vast and misty in outline in the over- 
hanging gloom. The clouds were full of snow, and there was no 
moon. All nature seemed wrapped in sleep, and an absolute silence 
reigned around ; its dead pulsations might be heard and noted as 
contrasting with the resonant vibration of inner areas of space, 
where musical tones still lapsed and lingered, as though loath to 
die. So he passed out beneath the arches of the north transept 
door, the stone carvings of which were filled with foliage and 
flowers, with heads of saints and angels, grotesque and beautiful at 
once ; and as he held the door half open for the young organist, 
the musician felt it would have been so easy to discover there the 
type upon which the face that smiled upon him had been modelled. 


A MAN AND A BROTHER 


111 


Dr. Garfoyle closed the door behind them, crossed the court to 
his own house, and, groping his way up to the top of his door-steps,, 
was blinded by the flood of light which issued from the lamps in his 
own hall. It was more brilliantly lighted up than usual, for he had 
a dinner-party, and the memory of this fact now fell upon his 
exalted mood with something of a shock of incongruity. Neverthe- 
less, it was entirely a clerical party. 

The room in which the canon entertained his guests was a stately 
apartment, the furniture all alike heavily carved and of massive oak. 
The large antiquated fire-place was still adorned with time-worn 
andirons and hooks of burnished brass ; the sideboards and the 
corner couches were of the same date as the room itself. Every- 
thing here was rich, as the appointments of such a house might well 
be, and the arrangements the exact reverse of those which distin- 
guished St. AmwelPs Vicarage ; yet the severity of Dr. Garfoyle’s 
taste still manifested itself in the rejection of any modern ornament 
or article of luxury. The room was as he had taken it from his 
predecessors. 

At the dinner-party on this February evening the dean faced 
Dr. Garfoyle, sitting at the foot of the handsome table. At the 
sides sat two of the vicars-choral of the cathedral, the senior curate 
from St. AmwelPs, and the dean of Dr. Garfoyle’s own college, 
these latter having come over on a visit. The dinner proceeded 
satisfactorily enough to the accompaniment of the usual clerical 
talk, which, though weighty and interesting to those whom it con- 
cerns, is apt to sound a trifle exaggerated in the ears of those who 
weigh its relative importance by the standard of some other 
measure, no matter what. Each profession is pardonably inclined 
to consider its own affairs those of the universe. To the soldier 
the world is apt to become a parade-ground, to the sailor tlie map 
measures little but sky and salt water, to the policeman it may be 
described as a “beat,” to the dustman no doubt the earth is 
but a vast cinder-heap, while to these clerical gentlemen Cosmos 
was certainly contained in their church. 

The big dean and the little one ventured to indulge themselves 
in a single glass of good wine ; all the rest, including Dr. Garfoyle, 
were total abstainers. The period of dessert liaving been reached, 
the dean pushed back his heavy chair so as to be able to cross his 


112 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


legs at a comfortable angle, and proceeded apologetically to 
remonstrate with his host on his special mode of meeting and 
attempting to grapple with the social problem. 

“ Such treatment as that which you bestow upon them, Garfoyle, 
fosters that sort of democratic and commercial spirit in the work- 
ing classes which is the curse of our day. You teach the people to 
regard themselves as the pets of Providence, as well as of the 
political agitator. You serve them personally. I have even heard 
that for one inmate of your house no hand but your own was good 
enough to smooth the sheets. Now, candidly, do you not find them 
quite prepared to regard such services done to themselves as being 
handsomely remunerated by means of a sort of Celestial Post-office 
Savings-bank account? So much to Dr. Garfoyle’s credit entered 
into his book, to be ratified upon presentation to the recording 
angel ; all accounts to be paid up in full on the Judgment- day ! 
Not one of them,” concluded the clerical dignity warmly, “ but 
would say, were he capable of phrasing the situation, that he had 
kindly consented to be used by Dr. Garfoyle as a means by which 
to better the canon’s chances in a kind of competitive examination 
for a good place up above, even possibly as a bid for a better berth 
down here. That is my experience of them ! ” 

The young clergy rather enjoyed hearing the dean criticise the 
canon, even in a friendly spirit ; the curate from St. Am well’s 
particularly relished the situation, which — truth to tell — his own 
candid revelations had served to bring about. But Dr. Garfoyle 
smiled, as a man smiles the citadel of whose confidence is unshaken 
by arguments such as these. 

‘‘ And I, Mr. Dean,” he said, “ have observed a striking dispo- 
sition in the minds of the rich to take into account the effects pro- 
duced upon the minds of the poor, only when showing them sym- 
pathy and kindness. When you fetch them in out of the highways 
and hedges, you are in a great hurry to go round and see how your 
goodness has affected them, and if they feel it properly ; but when 
you leave them in the ditch, you are not apt to trouble yourself 
about their mental processes. Pick up the pauper and treat him as 
a person, and you become answerable in the eyes of society for the 
effect upon his character of your conduct ; neglect him, or rather 
treat him not as a person but as a problem, for whose solution 


A MAN AND A BROTHER 


113 


society and not yourself is answerable, and society will bear tbe 
burden of the moral consequences of your delay with equanimity. 
You are at least as much bound to consider the moral effects upon 
their characters of leaving them out in the cold, as of bringing 
them into the blaze.” 

The dean was about to retort when the subject suddenly received 
a practical and totally unexpected illustration. The door behind 
Dr. Garfoyle’s back burst open, and in staggered a man whom the 
assembled company, with the exception of the curate, took for a 
drunken waiter. It was the moribund verger, William Birmingham. 
He was dressed in a greasy and crumpled suit of evening clothing, 
the same in which he used to go out waiting at Cambridge dinner- 
parties, while still verger at St. Amwell’s. His public appearances 
having been confined to these festive occasions, he still reappeared 
at the hour he was used to, when thus making his final debut upon 
the stage of life. 

The moment that he entered the room he was seized with a 
paroxysm of coughing, and was at first unable to articulate a word. 
He clung to the back of a chair for support. His appearance was 
ghastly in the extreme, and the effect upon these men in normal 
health was startling. The kindly little college dean, moved by an 
emotion of pity, jumped up and tried to force him into his own seat ; 
but the man resisted. He would not sit down, and as soon as he 
could speak, gasping and choking, he addressed the chair in the 
person of Dr. Garfoyle, in the style of a street orator : 

“ Sir, I have selected this evening to come and tell you, in the 
presence of these reverend gentlemen, of the superior clergy as 
represented by yourself, Mr. Dean, and by the cathedral clergy ; 
and of the inferior clergy as represented by the curate of St. 
Amwell’s ” — the curate hid a quiet smile which played about his 
lips, and a thrill of suppressed criticism circulated like a mag- 
netic current round the table — “ I have come among you once 
again, to inform you that I, William Birmingham, have left the 
Church of England, and have joined the ‘Independent Christian 
Thinkers.’ ” 

“ Well, Birmingham, I hope they’ll do you good,” said the curate, 
in a tone distinctly conveying a sense of the hitherto unspoken 
criticism. 

8 


114 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


The minister of that community has been to visit me here by my 
special desire.” 

“ What, here ? At the canon’s house in the close ? ” again inter- 
posed the irrepressible curate. 

But Birmingham continued : 

“He has shown me that the human soul demands liberty of 
thought, especially in the region of religion ; that the human soul 
is the slave of no man, be he dean or canon, vicar choral or simple 
curate ” — the said curate laughed right out this time, recognizing 
the ex-verger’s desire to punish him for sundry slights inflicted in 
St. Amwell’s vestry in former days upon his ever irritable self-love. 
“ The human soul,” continued the speaker, “ of a verger is the equal 
of the human soul of a dean, sir ; nay, of a bishop, or even of an 
archbishop, sir, although I do not see one here ever likely to attain 
that dignity.” 

Here the fearful coughing interrupted him. Dr. Garfoyle poured 
him out a glass of water ; he drank it oratorically and continued : 

“The Church of England was imposed upon me — I scorn the 
worldly pride which would bid me conceal it — ever since I was 
taken and baptized in the workhouse in the religion of the state, 
which gave me, an orphan child, the wretched food I ate, and the 
miserable clothes I wore. Gentlemen, I have seen through the 
Church, and it is hollow, rotten to the core. I have been in at one 
door, the low one ; they converted me among them when I was 
twelve years old, at the same time they apprenticed me to an 
evangelical churchwarden that kept a barber’s shop. From that 
’umble entrance, Mr. Dean, I advanced my position and my doc- 
trine till under more aristocratic guidance I took the highroad and 
wore the robes of Ritualism. I have seen through it all. I have 
been behind all the scenes. I know the secrets of the vestry cup- 
boards. I have learnt the dodges of the organ blowers and the 
sextons. I know which of the churchwardens pay in the offertory 
moneys to their own accounts and keep them there a quarter before 
they pass them on, thereby pocketing the interest of a quarter as 
a perpetual thing ; I’ve noticed all the little ways of curates, the 
self-advertisement of the commercial sidesmen, and even the little 
cheating ways of scrubbers over soap and flannels that they do not 
use upon the chancel stones. I’ve listened to the choir boys chant- 


A MAN AND A BROTHER 


115 


ing with angelic faces, sitting in four surpliced rows, the words 
of the popular songs of the music-halls. I came into the church 
by a backdoor, and 1 know the mysteries of the backstairs of the 
establishment, sir. I shake off the dust of the ‘sacred ’ pavements 
from my feet ! I quit the Church of England.” 

“Very well, Birmingham ; hadn’t you better go back upstairs to 
bed ? ” said Dr. Garfoyle equably. 

The man became inarticulate from exhaustion and emotion. He 
was so evidently dying that the scene grew painful. 

At that instant a telegram was put into Dr. Garfoyle’s hand ; it 
dated from Nice, the answer was prepaid. “ Pye to Garfoyle^"* 
Dr. Garfoyle read, then he quitted the room in unconcealed agita*- 
tion, leaving the dean master of the ceremonies. 

The dean possessed an admirable manner, kindly, courteous, 
benign — every lineament of his fine countenance bespoke absolute 
certainty of himself, his position, his Church ; his power of dealing 
with every emergency which in the manifold experience of human 
souls might arise here or hereafter. His voice was beautiful. 

“ My friend,” he said, approaching the unfortunate man, who 
still leaned gasping upon the back of a chair, “ sit down and listen 
to me.” 

William Birmingham obeyed, because he had no choice. 

“ Do not deceive yourself any longer. You are indeed fast 
descending into the chambers of death. Do not trouble your 
mind any further about the trivial distinctions of creed or sect. 
You have been most generously nursed and cared for by my friend. 
Dr. Garfoyle ; he has loaded you with benefits to which you had 
no claim. Have you no other words to utter than these most unbe- 
coming ones, in your last moments ? All your wishes will, I am 
very certain, be religiously respected by my friend the canon ; he 
has acted the part of a true benefactor to you in life ; if you wish 
it, I am equally certain that he will arrange that the last prayers 
which are said for you should be uttered by the independent 
minister whom you mention. I am very sure that I only express 
Dr. Garfoyle’s wishes in saying that he shall be sent for immedi- 
ately, and that you shall lie among the members of the sect you 
have chosen. Let no such cares trouble you in these supreme 
moments.” 


116 


.THE HUSBAND OP ONE WIFE 


Birmingham leaned forward eagerly. His fingers clutched 
the arms of the chair in which he had sunk, convulsively ; 
some new idea penetrated his brain with the dean’s words, and 
it was one which moved him strongly, as being hitherto un- 
considered. 

‘‘And have I trodden out the corn for deans and canons, to be 
muzzled when I seek a blade of grass, or a few husks, at the last ?” 
he cried. “ Why should any other church than that to which I 
have given my best services for all my years bear the charges of 
my illness ? It is not likely that it would consent to do so. Its 
riches are not of this world. It is poor. It might even leave me 
to the tender mercies of the parish ! ” He began fighting and 
struggling for breath, indignant at his own impotence. His head 
fell backward over the chair. It was clearly a man in extremis 
whom the little company of clergy had before them. The younger 
among them sprang up, and carrying the chair in which he lay 
helplessly extended, placed him on a big couch at the end of the 
room. 

“ Recall Dr. Garfoyle,” said the dean authoritatively to the 
servant who answered his summons, “ and let someone go for a 
medical man at once.” 

“ The homoeopathic doctor, not the one Dr. Garfoyle has — not Ms 
friend,” gasped the dying man, self-assertive to the last sad 
moments of his narrow life. And Dr. Garfoyle, returning, sup- 
ported him in his arms, while the clergy with one accord gathered 
round, and the dean commenced reciting the prayers for the 
departing. 

Once more with astounding energy the man silenced them. 

“ I did not think, I never believed that it would end like this. 
So soon ! So soon ! I am not forty years of age. Save me, sir ! 
Save me. Dr. Garfoyle I You — it is to you I speak ! You have 
great powers. I have heard men and women say a hundred times 
that you have saved their lives. A woman said once on her bed of 
death you had the gift of the apostles. I was angry then. I said 
she lied. Now I know she spoke the truth. You raised her up. 
Save me too. Give me life. Do you bear malice because I said 
I’d joined another church ? Am I no longer worth your pains ? 
Hear, I revoke it all ! You saved that boy Bruce Goldenour ! Oh, 


A MAN AND A BROTHEB 


117 


yes ; I heard the tale. You loved the mother, so you saved the 
child. Is it thus you use the Lord’s gift, denying it to his faithful 
servants, and wasting it on a strange woman ? ” 

His voice rose almost to a scream. Hr. Garfoyle put him from 
his arms, but knelt down by his side. 

‘‘ You let Budge die,” he continued, almost incoherently. ‘^Ah, 
you were right there ; he was not fit to live. But I am a man of 
worth and character, who has paid his way and done his duty by 
the Church, and served you well, though never treated with the 
confidence I deserved. Surely you will not let me die ? a valuable 
life like mine wasted ! What was that foolish child’s to mine ! ” 
and he seized Dr. Garfoyle round the neck with a grasp which 
nearly throttled him. 

In truth, as soon as Dr. Garfoyle had re-entered the room, even 
the very presence-chamber of death had seemed richer and fuller 
of life than before. His manner might indeed lack something of 
the ease and dignity of the dean’s, but then the dean’s personality 
was an ever-present quantity ; Dr. Garfoyle’s own individuality 
was held in utter abeyance. He became, at such crises as this, a 
mere instrument, a mirror of that inward and beatific vision which 
it had been permitted to himself to behold. B}^ the glowing 
memories 'of that which he had heard and seen, he appeared among 
these sordid scenes of human weakness as a man inspired. He 
uplifted others, such as this poor sufferer, by the unworded sense 
which his presence awakened in them of the immanence of the 
Divine and the Unseen. Blurred and distorted indeed were the 
images of the divine ray which penetrated to the clouded concep- 
tions of the dying man ; yet his fading eyes lit up with a gleam of 
unearthly brilliancy, inspired by a larger hope, even while Dr. 
Garfoyle uttered the syllables which announced his temporal and 
immediate doom. A thrill of indefinable awe and admiration 
swayed his nerveless frame, and soothed by the influence of his true 
friend’s presence, though unable any longer to hear his words, the 
dying man sank upon his benefactor’s breast. 

“He is gone,” said the dean, opening his prayer-book; but no. 
Dr. Garfoyle remained motionless, supporting the still form. The 
purport of certain words which had been uttered had so deeply 
penetrated the mists which already enshrouded the man’s brain 


118 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


that their final effect was almost miraculous. Once more he reared 
himself up and spoke : 

“ I charge you bury me near the cathedral, in the consecrated 
ground. If that is all, I die a churchman. Listen to me, every one 
of you, and bear witness. I say I’ll die a churchman, lest among 
you you should cast me out ! Dr. Garfoyle, you are an honest man; 
I charge you hear me. I’ll have respect in death as I have had in 
life. Give me a good funeral. I’ve earned it of the Church; 
flowers, followers, cathedral choir, clergy, surplices, the dean. 
Bring my cassock — cover me with it.” 

Thus the intrusion of an irrepressible and plebeian personality 
at the dinner-party was withdrawn. William Birmingham never 
spoke again. The dean finished reading the prayers over the dead 
body of the man who was their “brother” now for the first time. 
By one man of that little company he had been treated as a 
“ brother ” even while in life. 


CHAPTER XI 

A LIGHT-SOULED WOMAN 

The telegram which Dr. Garfoyle had received was urgent: 

“ Come at once. Serious trouble here. Wire to Pye.” 

Pye was very prominent in it, so Dr. Garfoyle feared Victoria 
herself must be unable to act personally. The three months’ 
absence from her society which he had prescribed as a period of 
probation would be up on the 1st of March. On that day he had 
proposed to set out for Nice. This was the 11th of February, 
Birmingham’s funeral was fixed for the 14th ; unless urgently 
necessary. Dr. Garfoyle could scarcely start until the evening of 
that day. He replied to that effect to Pye, and received no fur- 
ther communication. 

He awaited the meaning of the summons with an inward anxiety 
and unrest such as he had not known for years. When first Vic- 
toria left England she wrote to him pretty constantly. He had 
received several merry letters from Paris, where she seemed greatly 


A LIGHT-SOULED WOMAN 


119 


to have enjoyed herself. Pleasures seemed to surround her like 
happy insects on a summer’s noontide, and she seemed to sport 
with them as gayly and innocently as a child chasing butterflies. 
True, his imagination often refused to follow her in the scenes she 
described half playfully, half daringly, but his sympathy was with 
her as genuinely in her amusements as in her anxieties ; but just 
as an indulgent parent, having given his child permission to go to 
a dance, returns to his study and closes his door, so Dr. Garfoyle 
felt that Victoria had for the time being passed be3^ond his active 
participation in her lively pursuits. 

Sometimes she told him of new toilets, sometimes of new 
plays which she had seen, sometimes of entertainments at which 
she had assisted, or of people — principally, it must be confessed, 
men — to whom she had been introduced, and always he had 
received her letters with the same kindly indulgence, and the same 
generous allowance for their frivolous tone. Every letter that he 
received was full of the charm of her delicious individuality. It did 
not matter what she said, it did not matter what she wrote, she was 
so full of life and vitality. She was so brilliant, so bewitching 
that Dr. Garfoyle only marvelled afresh at each letter he received, 
that she should really, in the midst of all her enjoyment, take the 
trouble to remember him at all. 

His letters to her in reply were mainly eloquent where they 
treated of Bruce. That withholding of the expression of feeling 
which he had laid upon his conscience where she was concerned, 
was not operative when the child was in view. The windows 
wliich lighted up the chambers of his soul had, for a quarter of a 
century, been illuminated by a “ light which never shone on sea or 
land,” but the common earthly windows which looked on gardens 
where little children played and loved forms walked midst trees 
and flowers, had been closely shuttered from the living day ; now 
he stood waiting, not daring to admit the common lovely sunshine, 
not venturing to bid it touch the dusty walls, and show him all the 
objects by which he was surrounded, glorified by its long absent 
rays. 

He had determined to leave the mother free, and he loyally 
observed his promise. Expressions of his love for her he sternly 
denied himself; but his letters vibrated with a yearning passionate 


120 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


tenderness for the child, the stronger since passion only in that guise 
found admission there. 

So two months had passed away; but in the third a silence fell 
upon Victoria. Her letters grew brief, were divided by longer 
spaces, then ceased entirely. And when he received the Pye tele- 
gram Dr. Garfoyle had had no tidings for a month. During that 
period he had watched and waited like a schoolboy in his first term 
for the holidays, inwardly pining as a lover to rejoin his mistress. 
He continued to write although he got no answers, and in each letter 
he informed Victoria of his intention of coming out to Nice, as had 
been agreed upon, by the 1st of March. 

In a long dream Dr. Garfoyle read “P. L. M,” (Paris, L3^on, Mar- 
seilles) on the borders of the cushions of the carriage, as he was 
borne southward through the day and through the night. He spoke 
to no one ; he scarcely dozed; indeed he doubted greatly if he ever 
slept at all; always before his short-sighted eyes, up and down, 
backward and forward, moved those dingy letters on a dull brown 
ground, like the monotonous phantasmagoria of a never ending 
dream. In after years, whenever the memory of those long hours 
of dumb suspense touched him, always those tiresome letters rose 
with wearisome iteration before him, stamped upon the land, the 
sea, the sky, “ P. L. M.” 

Like everybody else he arrived at last, left his luggage at the 
station, and taking the inevitable bag in his hand, he commenced 
the ascent of the long, steep hill, at the top of which stood tlie 
hotel to which he had been in the habit of addressing his faithful 
letters to Victoria. He was as dusty, weary, and travel-stained as 
is the customary Englishman on his arrival. He had forgotten his 
personal appearance for the matters on his mind. Since he left his 
cathedral town lie had made no toilet, and his clerical attire lent 
no kindly aid in disguising the disorder of the journey ; wherever 
it was white it should by rights have been black, and vice versa ; 
moreover he was very hungry, having neglected to look out for 
himself in this respect. These circumstances first appeared to him 
just before he gained the brow of the hill, before he readied the 
hotel at which he meant to put up. He found himself obliged to 
pass by the flowering garden hedge of a beautiful villa domain, 
wherein sat a gay company of ladies and gentlemen at their after- 


A LIGHT-SOULED WOMAN 


121 


noon coffee. They were sitting beneath a glass portico, sheltered 
from the wind, which was crisply cold, and they shared their sunny 
retreat with many lovely flowering plants. Camellias in pots stood 
ranged around them ; dwarf roses and carnations already blossomed 
in the borders at their feet ; anemones shone among them as on an 
English day in June. 

Dr. Garfoyle, suddenly awakening to enjoyment of the freshness 
of the scene, grew sensible of the incongruity of his own personal 
appearance ; moved thereto by the fact that the attention of one 
of the group of laughing ladies seemed to be fixed upon him. At 
the same instant, before he had time to return the scrutiny, which 
he might easily have done, for he had taken the precaution to put 
his glasses on, here where all was strange to him, he heard a young 
shop-girl, sitting on a roadside bench with her lover, remark upon 
the distinguished company in the garden. “ Yoildj le vrai cachet 
da heau-mondeP She spoke in simple good faith, but the man’s 
answer was curt and uncompromising. “ Chut ! C’est plutot le 
vrai cachet du diableP 

One of the radiant figures was sitting just outside the shelter of 
the glass dome beneath the dropping corals of a pink pepper-tree ; 
this figure now bent forward as Dr. Garfoyle advanced on the 
other side of the low flowering bushes which lined the garden pal- 
ing, and that indefinable feeling which announces the recognition 
of one we know informed Dr. Garfoyle that she whom he had 
come to seek was gazing at him with intent interest and most 
genuine surprise. He in his turn was arrested by the same recog- 
nition. 

Victoria looked more beautiful than ever in the clear light, 
which brought so crucial a test to complexions less unimpeachable 
than her own. Her dress was of some white woollen material, and 
in her lap lay pink tulips, matching in hue the parasol which was 
being carefully held over her by a gentleman of the company, who 
in his right of office-bearer leaned upon her chair. Dr. Garfoyle’s 
thoughts were so full of her that it startled him to see her bodily 
represented before him. He stood still for a moment, startled and 
irresolute. Her countenance also expressed genuine surprise and 
hesitation. Had she not expected him ? What, then, was the 
meaning of the telegram ? 


122 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


The next instant Victoria had apparently taken her cue. She 
deliberately leaned back again in the garden lounge, extended her 
little dainty-toed shoes in a nonchalant manner, tossed her head 
with a pretty, impertinent gesture, and did not know Dr. Garfoyle ; 
had, in fact, never seen him before ! She further directed her com- 
panion, a handsome, dark man of young middle age, to hold the 
pink parasol at such an angle as would prevent her catching another 
glimpse of the dusty, travel-stained figure pausing on the wrong 
side of the garden hedge. 

“That old parson’s looking up his flock for next Sunday, I 
suppose; estimating our probable pecuniary value as hearers, I 
suppose,” said Victoria’s companion, loud enough to be overheard 
by Dr. Garfoyle. 

The tree under which this gentleman sat was a mimosa, and the 
tiny yellow sugar plums of its abundant blossoms mingled delight- 
fully with the pink tassels of the pepper-tree. There were three 
or four other young men and women in the same company, and 
one of the latter now joined in the conversation. 

“Let us hope,” she said, “that he has lost his voice, and has 
been sent out here by a grateful congregation to look for it.” 

“ And that he will not find it so long as we are here,” added a 
young man ; whereat they all laughed, and Victoria joined in the 
laughter. 

But by this time, although the sense of their words did not reach 
his ears. Dr. Garfoyle had become aware that he was a mark for 
their shafts of folly. He also realized with a bitter pang that 
Victoria Goldenour did not choose to recognize him in her present 
company. And reproving himself for having been inopportune in 
the attention which he had bestowed upon the said company in 
passing by, he hurried on. 

At any rate she was well, and he was thankful; nor could there 
be much amiss with Bruce, since his mother was so mirthful. For 
what reason then had he been sent for ? 

At the hotel, when he had engaged a room, he enquired for Mrs. 
Goldenour, and was informed that she had left the house and was 
now renting an adjacent villa for the rest of the season. 

Dr. Garfoyle was greatly annoyed with himself rather than 
with Victoria. He had had no intention of presenting himself 


A LIGHT-SOULED WOMAN 


123 


before her until he had done away with all the evidences of fatigue 
and travel. In his rather old-fashioned courtesy he would have 
thought it failing in the respect due to any woman, and most of 
all to her. He had many habits of concealed but extreme fastidi- 
ousness in the matter of personal refinement and custom in dress and 
conduct. No modern don was Dr. Garfoyle, who could live upon 
a hand-bag for a week, and travel to the south of Europe with a 
pocket-comb. Quite other were the traditions of the men of his 
race to which he loyally adhered. So he forgot Victoria’s share in 
the scene in which he had taken so unfortunate a part, and remem- 
bered only his own involuntary offence. 

Very different was his aspect when, at about eight o’clock on 
that same evening, he issued forth from the portals of his hotel to 
pay his respects at the villa. But just as he reached the doorway 
he was stopped by Mrs. Pye, who was evidently come in search of 
him. 

“Can I speak with you, sir?” she asked, flushing with self- 
importance. 

“ I am about to call on Mrs. Goldenour herself,” returned Dr. 
Garfoyle coldly. 

“ She doesn’t even know you are come, sir. I sent the telegram. 
I did it for the best. She is in debt, sir, sunk in debts and diffi- 
culties. She leaves me all her bills to pay, and I can’t keep the 
hotel people off her any longer. And that is not the worst of all : 
it is her society, which has the fastest reputation in the place. I 
know because his valet — Mr. Brabazon-Farnaby’s, I mean — is 
always with my cousin’s son, who ” 

“Mrs. Pye,” said Dr. Garfoyle in a voice which shook her 
nerves, “ return to your duties, or leave me here alone.” 

“ And what are my duties,” asked Mrs. Pye indignantly, “ if not 
to protect Mrs. Goldenour’s interests ? I have acted for the best 
if I did send for you unknown to her. I have been a district visitor 
and a Sunday-school teacher, and have always lived in pious families 
until now.” 

“ I should really be obliged, Mrs. Pye, if you would leave me,” 
said Dr. Garfoyle deliberately, taking his stand before a big blue 
glass ball on a pedestal in the hotel garden, which reflected pictures 
of himself and Mrs. Pye upside down and arranged at all sorts of 


124 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


ridiculous angles. His annoyance at the situation was extreme. 
This indeed accounted for Victoria’s refusal to acknowledge his 
presence. Well might slie have felt surprise that he should deliber- 
ately intrude upon her before the time allotted by himself was up. 
This backstairs business was repugnant to every fibre of his taste. 
To have been brought by a message from the maid. He clearly 
ought to have communicated with Victoria herself before hasten- 
ing out; but he had been entirely possessed by the idea that she 
had dictated the telegram, and that some misfortune had befallen 
her. No wonder that his appearance had been unexpected and 
unwelcome to her. 

The pace at which he walked, while thinking out these matters, 
enabled him easily to distance the intolerable Pye. She was out of 
sight when he reached the door of the villa, which stood open, 
revealing most of the interior of the house. A hall lined with 
orange-trees in pots, and fronted by camellias; at his right hand, 
in the garden, the water plashed in the basin of a fountain sur- 
rounded by flowering plants, while below ran the terraced walk 
skirting the road whence he had caught sight of Victoria and her 
company. All lay before him trembling and dreamlike in the hazy 
light of a half-risen moon. There was no sign of life about the 
house. There were apparently four rooms on the ground-floor ; 
flowers and vases and curtains filled every vacant niche ; but his 
attention was particularly struck by several rows of pale pink 
glasses hung just inside the portico, in which faint, rosy drops of 
light twinkled. “ Fairy lamps ” he remembered to have heard them 
called. He hesitated, looking for a bell, and found none ; either 
there was none to find, or it was overgrown with shrubs and 
leaves ; how summon anyone to let him in ? Here, on the thresh- 
old of this fanciful abode, he suddenly felt old and worn and 
cold, standing unheeded, uninvited, and unwelcomed on the door- 
step. Some Romeo should be here to woo the Juliet of this dainty, 
sweet abode. What had he, the Canon of St. Ives, fresh from 
burying William Birmingham beneath the snow of a prosaic 
English cemetery, to do in such a nest as this? 

But, while he paused, the scene received the living sanction that 
it needed. Down the stairway came a childish figure robed in 
white, its bare feet treading the carpeted steps with eager haste, 


A LIGHT-SOULED WOMAN 


125 


the waving hair tossed back from the lovely brow, the delicate lips 
apart with excited joy ; love shining in the sweet eyes, which 
gleamed like stars — and the whole welcoming figure of the boy, 
Bruce, leaped into his outstretched arms. 

“ Dr. Garfoyle ! Dr. Garfoyle ! I got out of bed, and I was 
looking over the stairs for my nurse, Pye; she must have gone out, 
and I saw you. Is it really you ? It is too good to be quite true. 
When did you get here ? Oh, mother, mother ! ” he cried, spring- 
ing out of Dr. Garfoyle’s arms, “ see, here is our friend come ! ” 
and, taking Dr. Garfoyle’s hand, he pulled him into the room, and 
the visitor was aware that Victoria rose up from her couch to 
receive him, thus introduced by her little son, whose bare legs and 
pretty baby feet rested lightly on the soft carpet. An exquisitely 
pure draught of life refreshed his lips as the child kissed them. 
“Get up, darling mother, and tell him just how glad we are. He 
is the best of all the friends and the goodest and the cleanest, and 
the handsomest,” he added, with a child’s irrelevant use of adjec- 
tives, stroking Dr. Garfoyle’s irreproachable clerical clothing as he 
spoke. 

As for Dr. Garfoyle, his heart responded more immediately to 
the child’s claims of affection than to the appeal of any woman 
living, not excepting the one before him ; who, as though out of 
sheer contradiction, now rose and came toward him as he stood in 
the doorway, holding the child b}^ the hand. 

“And have you nothing to say to me ? Are all your thoughts 
for Bruce ? ” 

Nothing ! when she had just tacitly ignored their acquaintance. 

“Now, Bruce,” she continued, “go back to your bed. Why 
are you here ? And you have nothing on ! ” 

Bruce looked down at his little white toes peeping from beneath 
the short night-shirt with a divinely innocent air. “ It’s as long as 
a surplice,” he pleaded in self-defence, “ and Dr. Garfoyle is accus- 
tomed to them.” ' And Dr. Garfoyle, picking up a silken rug from 
the sofa on which Victoria had been lying, wrapped it round the 
boy and took him on his knee, while he sank into a chair beside the 
mother and gazed upon her lovely face, drinking in the beauty for 
which his parched soul had been thirsting during all the weeks of 
absence. The child’s presence delivered them from the necessity 


126 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


of explanations ; and they were both glad to postpone the inevi- 
table moment. 

The little white feet sank deeply into the soft depths of the 
coverlet, and Dr. Garfoyle caressed them with his hand. 

“ He will not catch cold,” his mother said, ‘‘ thanks to these 
lovely carpets, all the product of a tiny hand loom, made in little 
squares. There’s not another villa on the coast where a like luxury 
could be found.” The rooms and the furniture were such a nice 
safe subject to discuss before the boy. The shaded light of the dim 
drawing-room threw up into relief the creamy whiteness of Vic- 
toria’s dress, making variegated reflections on its undulating folds, 
from the interwoven colors of the silken covering which enwrapped 
the child, whose fair head lay pillowed on his friend’s breast. In 
less than a quarter of an hour Bruce slept; and they both gazed at 
him in silence, fearful of awakening him, willing to delay the 
utterance of words which should break the spell that bound them 
in one common love of him. 

Presently Victoria gently whispered : “ Come,” and beckoning 
Dr. Garfoyle to follow, led the way up the easy stairway. 

He bore the sleeping boy tenderly in his strong arms and 
laid him down upon his little bed in his mother’s room. A 
pervading effluence from her sweet presence almost overpowered 
him as, leaning over the child, she carefully arranged the coverings, 
and just swept with her lips the little hand that lay upon the 
pillow; then they both left him and descended the stairs. The slight 
and trivial action in which they had been thus associated seemed 
weighted with the force of years of intimate knowledge. Had they 
any longer the power to resist the child’s unconscious influence? 
to rend the bonds his innocent hands had woven around them? 
Had not the ’wonderful intuition of the boy’s love lifted them at once 
above all reasoned opposition of their own wills, or dictation of 
adverse circumstances ? 

The whole house was still. They passed again into the scented, 
shaded room. A bright wood fire had been replenished on the 
hearth, and the rose-colored blinds had been lowered. Dr. Gar- 
foyle, with the inveterate habit of an Englishman, sat down in an 
armchair by the blazing logs, facing Victoria ; but no longer close 
to her, as when the child had sat between them. Now the explana- 


A LIGHT-SOULED WOMAN 


127 


tion grew pressing and inevitable ; Victoria faced it. Piling up 
the cushions beneath her head, she picked up a pale pink fan, a 
thing of fragile and artistic workmanship, and holding it up in a 
half shy attitude she asked : 

“ Why are you here, Dr. Garfoyle ? Did you not get my letter 
bidding you not to come ? ” 

But before he could interpret the meaning of her unexpected 
words, footsteps were heard upon the garden path ascending the 
tier of terraces. Victoria darted up and rang a hand-bell by her 
side. 

“Pye,” she said in an eager, hushed voice as that person 
appeared, ‘‘ put out the colored lights in the entrance immediately, 
and shut up the house-door. Quick ! ” 

But Pye had no mind to oblige her. 

‘‘ It is too late, Mr. Brabazon-Farnaby is already in the hall,” 
she replied in a resounding whisper. 

Then bowing and smiling with the confident air of a fashionable 
gentleman, and of one moreover so sure of himself as to be abso- 
lutely unable to doubt his reception, entered the same individual 
whom Dr. Garfoyle had already seen leaning over Victoria’s chair 
that afternoon, and shading her fair face from the sun and wind. 
Victoria performed the ceremony of introduction, and added to the 
mention of Dr. Garfoyle’s name the significant intimation that he 
had only arrived quite unexpectedly that very afternoon, and that 
he was “ a very old friend.” 

The other man, with a decidedly supercilious air, intimated that 
he misapplied the qualifying term “very old.” It was impertinent : 
so was the glance which accompanied the words. 

“As I have not just arrived from England, and as I cannot hope 
to be favored by Mrs. Goldenour with the title of ‘ a very old 
friend,’ I am content to wait her leisure.” So saying he sank 
indolently into the chair just vacated by the other visitor. 

This was evidently a denizen of that world which the Nician 
shop-girl had spoken of. He was a well-made, irreproachably 
attired, dark-haired, sallow-complexioned personage, with promi- 
nent features and penetrating eyes ; and he displayed that unshaken 
self-esteem which gives solidarity to a certain section of society, 
and leads it to treat all outsiders as rejected samples of humanity. 


128 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


Nor was he careful to conceal his contempt for an elderly English 
parson, whose inopportune presence spoiled his evening with the 
woman whom he condescended to honor with his approval. 

Dr. Garfoyle was not the man to ignore recognized conventions 
in any society in which he might find himself. He immediately 
advanced toward Mrs. Goldenour with intent to take his leave ; 
but she deliberately, rising also, addressed her black-haired friend 
in careless tones : 

Since you are good enough to offer to wait my time, Mr. Braba- 
zon-Farnaby, you will excuse me if I take you at your word. 
Perhaps,” she added, playfully tossing him the pink feather fan, 
you would like meanwhile to fan yourself or the fire, according 
to your temperament or your taste. At Nice, as we all know, both 
climate and choice do vary unaccountably.” 

“ Thanks, Pll do both,” said the gentleman thus addressed, as 
with the fan in his left hand he cautiously thrust a blazing log 
back into the flames. 

So they left him, sedulously reducing the wood to a white ash 
by the aid of Victoria’s pink fan — his own gift as it chanced. 

Victoria no longer observed her rule about colorless flowers 
as best befitting her widowed condition — so Dr. Garfoyle noted ; 
her white draperies were liberally relieved by ribbons, fans, or 
blossoms of every dainty hue. She snatched up a pale pink wrap 
and twined it round her lovely head and neck, while they passed 
out together into the porch, which was a sort of impromptu con- 
servatory, and she leaned against the glass doorway in the rosy 
light of the illuminating lamps. Hat in hand. Dr. Garfoyle stood 
below her upon the doorsteps. 

“ Tell me quickly,” she said, ‘‘ did you not get my letter — my 
letter of the 12th —telling you not to come ? Or is your unexpected 
advent the mistaken result of its reception ? ” 

‘‘ Surely,” said Dr. Garfoyle, “I came in accordance with the 
telegram which reached me on the 11th. It was sent by Mrs. Pye ; 
but it contained an urgent summons, as I naturally supposed, from 
you. I had not heard from you for a month; I was in great anxiety 
on that account. The letter that you allude to can only have 
arrived later on the very day I left. Do you not remember that 
the message spoke of ‘ serious trouble ’ here, urging me to come at 


A LIGHT-SOULED WOMAN 


129 


once? Well, here I am, I fear most inopportunely. Let me hasten 
to assure you I had no intention of intruding myself upon you 
before the time agreed upon was up.” 

“And vastly impertinent it was of Pye,” said Victoria, flushing. 
“ Positively I knew nothing of her proceedings ; and I was angry 
when I saw you from the terrace walk this afternoon. I hoped to 
punish you by my outrageous rudeness. I concluded you had dis- 
obeyed me. I had told you not to come at all; not to count on 
me for anything but disappointment. I had written that you 
should not waste your time and thoughts on me, that I could never 
be your wife. And now it is so hard to tell you. I wish that you 
had had my letter. It is so hard to say to you — to say to you of 
all men, to whom I owe so much. Pity me, do ! ” 

“ I do pity you,” he replied with rare unselfishness ; “ but was 
there any special reason for my rejection, other than that we know, 
and which I have had before me all along ; that you were young 
and beautiful, and well might feel toward me rather as a daughter 
than as a wife ? ” 

“ Yes, the reason is in there,” she said, speaking low, and point- 
ing to the door of the room which was the temporaiy prison of 
Brabazon-Farnaby. 

Then indeed Dr. Garfoyle felt himself rejected, and waves of 
prescient suffering surged up from heart to brain. Victoria saw 
the changed countenance, and added in eager self-exculpation : 

“ What a pity that you ever trusted me, or built any hopes upon 
me at all ! Ah, I am ‘ a light-souled woman,’ as Swinburne, or 
somebody like him, said of just such a woman as me. Not light- 
hearted. Ah, no ! nor yet light in action, that is far too common 
and vulgar for me ; but my soul is like a flake of thistle-down : blown 
by your breath it ascended toward heaven, by the breath of another 
it is caught and borne downward to the earth — no, not toward hell ; 
I have not weight enough to sink so low. It is merely wafted along, 
just above the shining surface of the ground, entangled by each 
flower set in its pathway; the sport of every butterfly that meets 
it on the wing. Poor little, miserable, futile soul ! too frivolous for 
heaven, too fastidious for hell ; floating ever on the surface of the 
earth, ever at the height of birds or flowers. With you, at my 
best, I soared ; with him at his best I sink to the level of quite 
9 


130 


THE HUSBAND OP ONE WIFE 


secondary uses, but it is tlie easiest flight, and I am tired. 
Good-by.” 

‘‘ Permit me to understand you, Mrs. Goldenour. Are you then 
engaged to Mr. Brabazon-Farnaby ? ” 

“Not that I know of, but I probably should have been by now, 
if you had not appeared upon the scene. Now I shall take him at 
his word, and shall make him wait my will.” 

“Allow me rather to take my leave,” said Dr. Garfoyle with 
dignity. 

“ Only on condition that you come and see me in the morning. 

I have something which you must give me another opportunity of 
saying to you under more favorable conditions than these.” 

Then she returned to the drawing-room, wliere the fire , was 
successfully blazing, the fan irretrievably scorched, and Mr. 
Brabazon-Farnaby was with difficulty digesting his disgust at 
her inconsistencies. 

Dr. Garfoyle took the road up the hill to his hotel. The wind 
had risen, and it swept past him in gusts, raising the fine white 
dust upon the road, and dispersing a bank of cloud which had 
hitherto hidden the moon, now shining out with a fitful silvery 
gleam from amid rent canopies of fleecy billows. Early as it 
was, the silence of night had alread}^ settled down upon the rest- 
less haunts of men, and only the barking of dogs, up here among 
the villas, awoke the echoes of darkness. Dr. Garfoyle ascended 
to his uninteresting room on the third floor, perused the notice 
on the door that he must ring once for the chamber-maid and 
so forth, and considered the warning that, en cas de dechy he 
would be fined a thousand francs ; noted the pieces of furniture in 
the room — there were exactly five, plus two minute rugs, one cheap 
candle, and a horrid smell of gas — then became aware that he was 
horribly fatigued. He had been travelling day and night ; he had 
forgotten to eat. His brain was feverishly active, his eyes burned, 
and refused to close beneath their dropped lids ; his quivering 
pulses leaped with strange unwonted throbs of pain. Hydra-headed, 
the crushed emotions of long years rose up and confronted him in 
his exhaustion, as he stood paralyzed by fatigue and grief at the 
still unclosed window of his lonely room. Warned thus by physical 
exhaustion that he was too weak to brave the contest with his 


IN A VILLA GARDEN 


131 


awakening foes, lie hastened out again, enquired the road to the 
nearest English chemist’s, and there had a sleeping draught pre- 
pared for his immediate use. 

This declining of present conflict, with all his nerves unstrung, 
though in itself a proof of his sound sense, smote his sensitive con- 
science like the commission of a common crime. He had drunk the 
cup that had been put to his lips, but he had drugged it. Never- 
theless, he slept before he had made his peace with his inward 
monitor, praying dumbly that in sleep he might attain that state 
where was neither failure nor fruition of love’s quest ; until at 
length, in the immortal growth of a passion purely divine, he might 
burst the cerements and grave-clothes of the flesh, and find himself 
at last one with the very life of love itself. 


CHAPTER XII 

IN A VILLA GARDEN 

After the agitation of the night before Dr. Garfoyle slept late. 
He had barely had time to recognize that he had not incurred the 
fine levied in this interesting hotel upon the estate of those who 
might have the misfortune to mistake one of its narrow beds for a 
coffin, when a note from Victoria Goldenour was brought up to 
him. In it she begged him to call upon her “at once,” and he 
shortly obeyed the summons. He found her waiting for him at 
her garden gate, in her dress of soft gray material, with bands of 
mouselled chinchilla wandering up and down it. Her parasol was 
also gray, but rose-lined, and the sunny reflection touched her trans- 
parently clear skin with happy effect. 

“ Did I send for you too soon ? ” she said. “ I wanted to forestall 
the worries of the day. With your consent we are going to make a 
little excursion together ; as yet we shall have the country all to 
ourselves. We will get into the first cabriolet that comes our way, 
then we will drive three miles out to a place I know, where there 
are real flowers, and a real view from a delicious spot I love among 
the hills. There you can surprise the spring at work, get above 


132 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


the olive woods, and note tlie lovely coloring of the bay. I shall 
not take Bruce or you will attend to him, and this morning you are 
to be mine, all mine, just for once ; for the last time, you know ; 
you are to listen and I am to talk ; then I will hear you while you 
explain to me all those weighty matters which no doubt you have 
upon your mighty mind. ‘Facts,’ of course, you are sure to call 
them ; men’s things always are facts to them, though they are no 
more ‘facts’ in reality than are ours which we call ‘fancies.’ 
Indeed, I sometimes think myself that the truest truths are facts of 
the imagination only, though I don’t suppose I must ask you to 
agree in that sentiment ! ” 

Dr. Garfoyle smiled, but waived the subject ; he wanted to look 
about him. Now first he realized that he had left the winter 
behind him in England ; everywhere he beheld budding leaves and 
opening blossoms. To eyes which had not been taught by custom 
or indifference to look coldly upon the vivid scenes of beauty 
which shone in this world-trodden corner of a lovely land, the 
prospect was delightful. The road by which their carriage 
ascended toward the hills was bordered with trees, now decking 
themselves anew with bright green crowns. The villa gardens 
were filled with flowering and sweetly scented shrubs and flowers. 
Here and there they skirted an orange grove, or a plantation of 
feathery white-stemmed palm-trees tied up for preservation for the 
coming festival in Rome ; and the intense brilliance of the sun- 
shine reflected all these objects with fresher and more varied 
coloring than he ever remembered to have seen before. 

When they reached the elevated spot on which the villa, pointed 
out by Victoria as their destination, stood, they were able to look 
down upon an unbroken expanse of the Mediterranean, far below 
them. The sea was one illuminated sheet of deep-blue Avater, 
varied here and there by white streaks of lighter hue, where some 
earthy rivulet contributed its doubtful stream to the purer waters. 
At the confluence of these streams Avhite gulls dived and struggled 
for their prey, uttering plaintive cries which reached to distant 
ears ; while their white wings, bathed with spray, like living sema- 
phores flashed signals in the brilliant sunshine. 

“ My Italian master grants me the entr'ee to this domain,” Victoria 
explained. “ It is his, but it is empty, and he wanted me to take it. 


IN A VILLA GARDEN 


133 


As I told him I had not the means, he lias graciously presented me 
with the key, entreating me to call it mine until events change. I 
welcome you ; pray make yourself at home.” 

They left their carriage halfway down the hill, and ascended 
on foot to the level of the villa garden. They passed along the 
gravel paths, noting the abundance and variety of the flowers which 
fllled the air with exquisite perfume, while the shining foliage was 
still covered with glittering gems of dew. Then, by one consent, 
Victoria and her companion passed through a rustic gateway and 
found themselves in an enclosed space of ground left uncultivated 
by the proprietor, doubtless to be built upon at no very distant 
date. Here they exchanged the garden flowers for their sisters of 
the woods. Lilies grew at their feet, blue hyacinths hung their 
fragrant heads ; flowers of the narcissus spangled all the mossy 
floor. Here, too, was a thick belt of trees ; the cork-oak, the hazel, 
the palm willow, mingled at the edge of the enclosed ground with 
the groups of olives. 

They stood together, in the heart of the wooded territory. Here 
the ground was stony and dry, and Victoria selected a rocky seat 
from which she could command an uninterrupted view over sea and 
land. The sunlight fell through the quivering branches of softly 
shading olive-trees, painting the grassy carpet at their feet with 
arabesques of dancing light ; in her lap lay the flowers he had 
gathered for her — just a loose sheaf of blue hyacinths, their long, 
blanched sheaths, thin leaves, and odorous bells resting in confusion 
upon her soft gray gown. No human being was apparently near 
them, but far off a donkey-boy drove his slow beast home toward 
Nice, laden with two living kids, their pitiful feet tied across its 
back. Happily Hr. Garfojde was too short-sighted to see them, 
even with his glasses on, but Victoria noted them and sickened at 
the sight. And upward toward the mountain slowly toiled an 
Italian peasant in his picturesque dress, with a great bundle of 
desiccated reed-canes on his back, cut from the marshes near to 
Ventimiglia. Far below, to the right, lay the whole range of white 
terraces and houses which constituted the town of modern Nice, 
now basking in the early sunshine. 

This was the view which Victoria had purposely brought Hr. 
Garfoyle there to see, but she allowed him only a few minutes in 


134 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


which to enjoy it before she grew restless for speech — speech of 
some sort, relevant or irrelevant. 

“ Now,” she said, I am going to talk to you about my- 
self. I like talking about myself, but one has to be very 
interesting to dare to do it. I am of opinion that it would 
save trouble if everybody would kindly indicate to their friends 
the light in which they wish to be regarded. You see every- 
one quite naturally takes a different view of the same person. 
You are sure to be to yourself what you are to nobody else. 
This is truer in some cases than in others, and it is particularly true 
in mine ; for I am like a mirror. Ah ! yes, you know I am. The 
opal is my favorite stone. I made my husband give me opals for 
his wedding-gift ; afterward I heard they were unlucky, and so, 
alas ! I have found them, but the fact remains that what the opal 
is to other stones I am to other human beings. You, for instance. 
Dr. Garfoyle, — physician, canon, mystic, saint, — you see in me not 
Victoria Goldenour, not me, myself, as I was made or things have 
shaped me, but a poor, tiny reflection of yourself ; that little femi- 
nine image of your mind which I am capable of giving back to 
you ! It affects you ; why ? Because it is the complement of your 
own nature ; but it is not me. Now, don’t protest ; it is my 
turn to preach, yours to listen. Learn what it is to be compelled 
for once to hear. By all that is highest in me I am impelled to 
mirror you ^ but driven by another set of instincts I mirror quite 
another kind of man ! For me the question stands thus — which 
representation is nearest to the truth of my own nature ; which 
impression therefore makes me happiest in responding to ? ” 

“ Yes,” he said ; “ your own highest happiness, that is the 
question.” 

There you are,” she said, laughing and yet very much in 
earnest, ‘‘ that is just like you, assuming that to strive to attain to 
an ideal must be for my good. I doubt it. The effort in the long 
run, nay in the short trot, in my experience produces a reaction, 
resulting in a fall proportionally deep. By so much as I rise above 
my natural level on a Monday do I sink below it on a Tuesday. 
On Sunday I listen to your anthem in your cathedral, and I am 
yours in heart and soul ; but during the week John Pengelley 
drives me to the ‘ Two Thousand,’ and I am his ; while at the 


IN A VILLA GARDEN 


135 


present season the Hon. Lionel Brabazon-Farnaby is to accom- 
pany me to Monte Carlo, and I am perfectly contented with the 
arrangement.” 

Dr. Garfoyle winced; this plainness of speech, even from her 
pretty lips, offended his cultivated taste. 

“ Yes, I see you do not like to hear me say these things,” she 
exclaimed but bear with me just a little yet, my friend, for there 
is no offence in truth itself, and these things that I say are true. I 
have not had such an extensive education as might teach me howto 
phrase my meanings in your superior language ; I can but show 
you in cheap vivid pictures that which I would liave you understand. 
Now, shall I tell you what I see when I am with you ? Listen ! 
We are always in the glorious aisles of your magnificent cathedral ; 
one long service is in perpetual progress, only the occupations 
of the congregation are not in the performance of conventional ser- 
vices only ; but all their lives seem led within these walls, just as 
children bring their dinners or their dogs to foreign cathedrals. 
The reverberations of the organ are forever in my ears, the sounds 
of praise and the voice of intercession never cease when I am thus 
seeing eye to eye with you. It is beautiful and harmonious; it 
brings to me a sense of being disenthralled from time and sense, 
and of floating in diviner air. I am good, I am happy, and it is all 
spontaneous ; there are no stated times nor seasons ; there are no 
hymn-books, footstools, nor collections ; no dressing-gowned ver- 
gers. (By the way, I never see William Birmingham there inspect- 
ing the vestry-cupboards.) There is an absolute deliverance from 
dead forms and out-worn creeds ; but I could not bear it always, I 
should die if I stayed there. The atmosphere is all too rare for me; 
I faint from the overpowering influence of the captivated essence 
of adoration. I need to escape, to exercise quite contrary powers, 
to taste pleasures which never press in there.” 

Much moved. Dr. Garfoyle held up a protesting hand, but she 
eagerly resumed : 

“ Oh, yes, I know what you would say, that ‘ no pleasure as such 
is excluded ’; for instance, I know that if I were your wife you 
would permit me, nay, even encourage me to go to all the plays 
and pastimes I might choose to frequent. I know how you would 
stand looking on, and with what heavenly joy your face would 


136 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


shine at witnessing my pleasure in, let us say, whirling round and 
round in John Pengelley’s arras, just as I should smile at Bruce’s 
joy. I know that there would be in no hidden corner of your 
generous mind one thought of critical withdrawal, or one unsym- 
pathetic word upon your kindest lips. But for all this, you would 
have me take my play in a cathedral, friend ; for you dwell your- 
self in a spiritual shrine, in a temple of divine ideas ; nor is there 
any pastime or pursuit but you would bring there ; nay, must 
bring it there, before you could enjoy, or share it, just as there is 
no pain, not excepting this which I, alas ! am causing you, with 
which you will not wrestle prostrate on that pavement, when its 
agonies overtake you.” 

“All this,” said Dr. Garfoyle briefly, “is but to say that life, 
whether consciously or unconsciously, must be lived out beneath 
the eye of the Eternal Giver ; the temple that you speak of is no 
narrower than the whole earth and no wider than the human heart.” 

“ But I cannot consecrate all my life, and what is more I don’t 
want to; I want to escape, I want my own little play-place where 
I may hide from the Immensities,” she said, lifting up her arms 
dramatically, and letting them fall again. “I claim a corner where 
I may be silly — not naughty, don’t misunderstand me. No, you 
could not; you are too good. I am not accusing myself of any- 
thing special. I am not hysterical, nor have I anything to confess ; 
but were I to lay bare my heart, it would be a penance at which 
you, rather than any other man under heaven, should assist. Your 
glance would heal and never hurt me; but to be always breathing 
an incense-laden atmosphere, to be always treading holy ground, 
to you it is natural; it is your chosen pathway, your common air ; 
whereas to me it would be to find myself in a back seat in heaven 
listening to angelic choirs when I had taken a ticket for a sofa-stall 
at the Casino, or at best when I would hear the thrushes and the 
blackbirds waken on some dewy morning in an English spring. 
The impetus of the recoil would project me downward far toward 
hell.” 

“You did not find out all this at first?” Dr. Garfoyle said; 
and his voice, though very tender and low, had an accent of grief 
not wholly free from reproach. 

“ You do right to say that,” she quickly answered. “ I did feel 


IN A VILLA GARDEN 


137 


from the very first that the chosen paradise of your state, wherein 
you continually dwelt, was quite another one than mine. We all 
have our own heavens and our own hells, I have heard you say so 
yourself ; hut in my great gratitude and love to you for saving my 
boy Bruce’s life — yes, you did save him,” she said in answer to a 
protesting movement on his part — “ I thought I might take you by 
the hand and lead you out into that pretty little playground of mine, 
which you had closed your eyes unto, because it lay outside your 
special range in the doubtful world. I thought that I could bring 
you other pleasures: love you had forgotten; joys you had refused 
to know, in token of my gratitude.” 

‘‘ Well,” he asked enquiringly^ “and did I fail to make you feel 
how blessed I should be in learning of you ? If so, it was because 
I did not dare to take you at your word, and weight your life with 
mine.” 

“Possibly,” she said; “but what you showed me was that you 
would take the joys I brought you, and thank me for them too, oh, 
with so much love and gratitude, if !’ 

“ Yes, pray go on ; ‘ if ’ what ? ” he said, and his voice trembled. 

“ If once for all I would bring them into your shrine, would con- 
secrate them, symbolize them. See, dear, good, great friend, only 
as a sacrament in very deed, not in mere word as suffices the rest of 
the world, could you share in the joys I offered you, and I am with- 
held ! I am too slight a thing ; besides, I am too true. My nature 
is complete, all one. I am not vain, nor dull, but I am different 
from your thought of me.” 

“I think you transparently true; indeed I find you so, and in 
the truth of any character lies its consecration, even as in its uncon- 
scious obedience to the laws governing its growth from bulb to 
flower lies the perfection of the hyacinth’s service.” 

“ Ah ! but I am not a flower, but a reasonable human being,” 
she said; “and the conscious, perfected development which you 
would demand of me lies beyond my powers.” 

“ So all this is what you wrote to me in the letter which I never 
got, I suppose ? ” he asked. 

“Oh, no; I could not write it,” she said eagerly, “nor could I 
speak it saving to yourself— I am not sufficiently clever ; but I 
warned you not to come out here, and I told you that, before the 


138 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


time agreed upon was up, I should probably be engaged to someone 
else. I gave that letter to Pye to post, and now I see it all. Pye 
is anxious, not about my soul, but about her own; she wishes to 
secure her own salvation. You who love me may entrust my soul 
with all its chances to its Maker ; but Pye feels that her own 
celestial situation is at stake. She is anxious to decorate her golden 
crown with me ; she thinks that I should shine quite nicely in it, 
just as one of my best diamond stars would grace her Sunday 
gown at a mothers’-meeting tea at St. AmwelPs vicarage.” 

‘‘ But,” he still objected, “ you have co-operated with me of your 
own free will. And can I forget so soon the value of your gifts 
when so employed ? ” 

‘‘Oh, yes ; I have nursed Budge for you, and I have kissed the 
paralytic, who took me for a sweetly scented angel, but after all I 
have something to confess to you ” — and lifting up her face, which 
she had buried in the hyacinths, she said archly, “and I let John 
Pengelley kiss me directly afterward, when we were driving back 
together, to take away the taste of death. That is what I am like. 
He met me in the Newmarket Road and drove me back in his 
hansom, after we had been to the tile works. Such are the draw- 
backs of my attractions. I should not be good enough to kiss the 
paralytic, if I were not bad enough to let John Pengelley kiss me 
too. Not one of your thirty district visitors would have done 
either one thing or the other, and you know it perfectly well, Dr. 
Garfoyle.” Then, with a little tired sigh, she added, “Not every 
day can I be climbing up a ladder of light, you standing on the 
topmost rung and reaching down a hand to me. Now, do you 
understand ? ” 

But if he understood he remained still unconvinced. 

“ Why,” he said almost impatiently, “ will you persist in identi- 
fying yourself with your shadow ? Have I ever seen any other 
woman capable of spending the long hours of a night of agony 
alone, when her own son lay dying, with the human outcast upon 
her bosom — an outcast so horrible as to be forsaken even by his 
own mother? Do you not know that in that hour, when I lifted 
you up and freed you from that fearful corpse, my heart fell down 
and worshipped the woman capable of such an action ? ” 

“ I did it for my own child’s sake,” she said. 


IN A VILLA GARDEN 


139 


‘‘ Had it been that motive alone which inspired you, you could 
not have done it,” he replied ; and she was silent. 

For a short time there was absolute stillness, unbroken save by 
the whisperings of the light breeze in the clump of neighboring 
palm-trees, the hum of insects, the cry of the distant gulls ; but 
the silence missed the musical quality given to it in an English 
spring by the joyous concert of woodland songsters. Dr. Gar- 
foyle had been standing hitherto upon a raised bank covered with 
flowers, near to, but behind, the rocky seat which Victoria had 
appropriated. Hence she could not see his face, and to her eager 
apprehension the silence had seemed ages long, and his voice 
reached her ears when at length he spoke, as though it came from 
a remote distance to where she sat upon the grass, in the villa 
territory of modern Nice. His tones were measured, and sternly 
self-controlled ; but with a break in their compass which betrayed 
the cost of that self-mastery. 

“You make playthings of your phrases, Mrs. Goldenour. 
Words are toys to you,” he said ; “ I do not find it possible to 
answer you in the same tone in which you speak to me. In all 
likelihood the day will never dawn in which it will be possible for 
me to tell you what my true feeling has been about you and your 
child. That is indeed a thing I would not have you comprehend. 
But, as regards the actualities of my position with regard to your 
own, in those I have never been deceived. You were filled with 
terror at your child’s danger, you attributed his restoration to my 
efforts ; you confounded gratitude with love ; you expressed your- 
self more strongly than you really meant. Remember, I refused 
to take you at your word, unless in three months’ time your atti- 
tude remained the same. What has happened is precisely what I 
anticipated. I had not at first, nor have I now, any disposition to 
attempt to bend your judgment or your inclination in the direc- 
tion of my desires, so long as the truth of your own nature directs 
ypu in another way.” 

“ I am so sorry,” she said, putting out her hand like a child who 
seeks to be forgiven. 

“ I do not hold you even answerable,” he said gently, taking the 
proffered hand and raising her up, “ for my bitter share in your 
mistake. Your words were dictated by a grateful heart. You 


140 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


meant me good, and not barm. What you have really done you 
could not know. But you play lightly with the deepest passion 
of men’s hearts, Mrs. Goldenour, and make them instruments of 
discord or of harmony beneath your touch.” 

Let me be a child if not a wife to you,” she said impulsively, 
“ for indeed I love you dearly.” 

“Your child indeed is as a child to me,” he answered ; “but, as 
for you, if I have lived twenty years longer than you have done, it 
is only that with truer heart, quicker brain, with wanner energies, 
and more entire self-surrender, I might say, I love you. You have 
bridged the chasm between my youth and age ; and have converted 
the bitterness of early denial into the force of later longing.” 

Suddenly he ceased speaking, evidently by a tremendous effort 
of self-repression ; so painfully did it affect Victoria that, shocked 
and frightened, she again tempted him to speak by her attitude 
and tone. 

“ Alas ! ” she said, and a quick change came over the vivid 
expression of her face, “ and have I really been to you what Shad- 
rach’s wonderful voice was to me when the terrible being. Budge, 
lay dying in my arms — something so very much sweeter and better 
than I knew ? Oh, poor, little, commonplace, miserable me ! And 
has my voice really been to you, as Shadrach’s was to me, full of 
things far above my knowing ? What I was to you is just as little 
me, my very self, as Shadrach Trupper’s voice was representative 
of himself. What you really want. Dr. Garfoyle, and what you 
will never find, is Shadrach’s voice in Bruce’s throat; but, when 
you meet with Bruce’s beauty of nature, you will not find it accom- 
panied by Shadrach’s perfection of expression. Surely you must 
have met with many a district visitor with a far lovelier disposition 
than mine ? but you have passed her by, because I look that which 
she is. But, after all,” she added, turning away, “you will not 
mind much. You will console yourself because it is a duty, be- 
cause you are a saint.” 

The man shuddered, and looked up in pathetic protest. 

“ Well,” she added, half pettishly, half in eager self-exculpation, 
“ how could I know this W'as to be the end of our friendship ? 
Moreover, it is I all along who have taken the initiative. Remem- 
ber, until now, you never spoke at all ; you never committed yourself,” 


IN A VILLA GARDEN 


141 


“You would have me find language in which to answer you? 
You would have me attempt to show you what this episode in our 
lives, to which you so lightly refer, is, and has been, to me ? The 
feelings which you have awakened in me lie too deep for any 
representation save that which conveys the most absolute sur- 
render possible of myself and of all that is mine to give. The 
love of you, Mrs. Goldenour, and of your boy, has become so inti- 
mate a portion of my life that you cannot take it from me, nor 
would I surrender it if I could. You wish me to speak to you ©f 
myself, Victoria ; hitherto I have shrunk from doing so, but you have 
willed it, and it shall be. In me you have awaked the dead or 
rather that which, if not dead, had lain unconscious since my youth. 
You say that you like pictures in your talk, you have a partiality 
for illustrations; then look there : you see that sapling whose few 
sparse leaflets mingle with the downy catkins of the hazel just 
below, and reach upward to the red pyramids of the firs above — 
would the destruction of its promise, by the fury of storm or 
mistral, compare with the devastation similarly wrought upon the 
veteran branches of the oak-tree standing on the hill beyond? 
See how in its innumerable leaves, its massive boughs and myriad 
leaves, the sap is stirring; as the frost checking the promise of that 
sapling, was the bitter loss of my early manhood, compared with 
this, the utter devastation of my years.” 

“ But I am young. I did not understand,” she murmured. 

“ You have possessed yourself of my past, you fill my present, 
and I cannot conceive of any future apart from the thought of you 
and of your boy. My whole being enfolds you both in an embrace 
which death itself cannot dissolve, since such love is immortal. 
Do you know the motto of my family, Mrs. Goldenour ? No ? 
Well, it is this : Amor sub pondere crescUy and beneath the 
load of half a century of years, the burden of a weighted spirit 
and the denials of my earlier manhood, my love for you has grown 
into a blessed, vital unity ; and I choose to assert it when I say 
I love you ! With my body I adore you, with my soul I seek 
communion with yours, with my spirit I refer the consecration of 
my love to its divine source ! You have willed that I should speak, 
and I have done so.” 

“ I hope it makes you feel better,” she said, pulling the hyacinths 


142 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


to pieces, “ it often does me ; but look ! WTio is that coming up 
the hill ? There’s an end of our solitude. Why, it’s my Italian 
master, the owner of the villa. He must have followed us out 
here. I rather wish he’d stayed at home ; these mental gymnas- 
tics are fatiguing. We must go and meet him. He appears to be 
getting out the villa furniture, and seems bent on hospitality.” 

The Italian advanced, civil, mellifluous, loquacious, honored by 
this lovely lady’s approval of his property ; respectful to the digni- 
fied ecclesiastic who accompanied her. He had, indeed, spread a 
table with his own hands on the terrace, and now invited their 
attention to the wine of his countiy^ his native oranges, his very 
own figs, and his confectioner’s cakes. Further it seemed that 
with an eye to business he saw in Dr. Garfoyle a possible tenant 
for the unlet villa, and, the repast concluded, the advantages of 
the dwelling-place were submitted for their consideration. He 
had dismissed his own carriage at the foot of the hill ; Victoria 
had therefore no choice but to offer him a seat in hers, and the 
Italian’s delight at the success of this innocent scheme received the 
last touch needed to its perfection by Dr. Garfoyle’s declining 
the third seat for his share, and begging to be allowed to remain 
somewhat longer in the garden. With scrupulous and elaborate 
courtesy the owner handed him the key, and Dr. Garfoyle turned 
away just as the Italian, addressing Mrs. Goldenour in the deli- 
cately phrased and complimentary style characteristic of the lan- 
guage he professed, handed her a letter which he said he had 
received from the hands of her boy’s goiimrnante when he called 
to enquire for her that morning. The gouver7iante had, he said, 
represented it to be ‘‘an important letter from England,” and noth- 
ing but the gracious quality of Mrs. Goldenour’s reception of his 
poor attention could have made him retain it in his possession so 
long. 

Victoria read her letter, and five minutes later she was back 
again in the olive wood. The hyacintlis which had lain in her lap 
were now crushed beneath her feet. Her eyes were full of trouble. 
Like some hunted, wild thing was her attitude. Her whole bearing 
was one of defeat, and bespoke some new and terrible cause for 
fear. 

“ Dr. Garfoyle, Dr. Garfoyle ! ” she called. “ Come to me ! 


IN A VILLA GARDEN 


143 


Come quick ! The Italian is waiting down below with the carriage, 
and I cannot keep him long. Make haste, please, and read that. 
Oh, my friend, my friend, do let me take back all I said. Do not 
remember the foolish things I’ve uttered. You love the boy and 
me — take us quite away. Take care of us safely. You can easily 
pay my bills, I insult you if I mention them. Five hundred pounds 
will clear us here. Take us away. His father’s family cannot 
deprive me of the boy if I am married to such a man as you ! See, 
read Sir Peregrine Goldenour’s precious production, then you will 
understand ” 

Dr. Garfoyle silently read the letter so excitedly thrust upon him. 
It was indeed a sufficiently unpleasant production ; the writer of it 
informed his sister-in-law that he had heard with entire disapproval 
of her proceedings at Nice, and that having regard to the fact that 
he was Bruce’s guardian, and that the marriage which — he was 
informed — she contemplated making would place the boy in the 
hands of a totally unsuitable step-father, he had come to the decision, 
toward which his own and his wife’s counsels had long been tending, 
to remove Bruce altogether from her care and control, and to place 
him at school with their own younger boys. As Bruce was now 
over seven years of age. Sir Peregrine kindly reminded his sister-in- 
law that her rights unsupported by any special provision of her late 
husband’s will had already expired, and he added that she might 
expect him to appear personally on any day and to take the boy 
back to England with him. He felt sure that she would be sorry 
to hear that he had had an attack of bronchitis, for which a 
fortnight’s stay in the finer climate of Italy might well prove 
beneficial. 

Victoria only wished that the attack had carried him off ! 

‘‘They care nothing for my boy,” she explained to her friend; 
“ they have five of their own, and the capacities of their narrow 
hearts are strained to the uttermost to accommodate them. They 
would never have dreamed of taking Bruce away from me had not 
my grandfather. Sir Victor Bruce, left him his heir. It is nothing 
but pompousness and plagueyness on Peregrine’s part ; while, as to 
her, she is one of those ineffectual women who never do get a chance 
of redeeming the record of their own insipidity except by interfer- 
ing in other people’s lives.” 


144 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


« Forgive the question, Mrs. Goldenour, but bad you any thought 
of paying your debts by marrying Mr. Farnaby ? ” 

‘‘Well, certainly cash is convenient,” she said, “but I’d rather 
have it without marrying anyone — at any rate, in a hurry.” 

“To make your decision you must be in a freer position,” he 
said. “ What is money when you have such power over my life? 
I cannot enter into your present scheme so far as it concerns our 
mutual relations ; you will yourself be the first to feel it, imme- 
diately, after all that you had previously said to me ; but the 
money that you require I shall ^be able to place in your hands by 
the day after to-morrow.” 

He hastened to forestall her objections by telling her that the 
sum was but part of a fund he employed; if she did not use it 
someone else would. He reminded her that he was the only man 
from whom she could safely borrow without thought of equivalent 
return. 

“In short, it’s charity, and I am ‘an object,’ ” she said, smiling 
at the peculiarity of her position, even through her tears. 

“ One of the Guild of Widows,” he replied, smiling also. 

“ But may I not go and have a little private gamble and be 
indebted to nobody?” she said. “Mr. Brabazon -Farnaby was 
going to drive me to Monte Carlo ; but now I shall not dare to 
go. I will not leave my boy. No one can say when Peregrine 
may come, and Pye is clearly a traitor in the camp. She failed to 
find an ally in you ; she has sought one in Sir Peregrine Goldenour ; 
all this is doubtless due to her ! This is the way the meek rule the 
earth ! ” 

Victoria looked up into her friend’s expressive countenance, now 
eloquent with strong feeling, with the pathetic pleading of a sweet 
and childlike soul. She placed her little hands in his, and had he 
willed it so, the power of his rich, strong nature over her impulsive 
spirit would have been enough to bring her to his arms. So vivid 
was the magnetic attraction of his divinely energized nature that 
he had in that instant but to take the gift of her surrendered life 
as a promise made to his; but with clear-eyed comprehension of 
their mutual relations, he well knew that Victoria’s love, so impul- 
sively given, would be equally quickly withdrawn ; and he had 
sternly determined that unless she turned to him in absence, taking 


IN A VILLA GARDEN 


145 


Step by step in solitude alone, of her own pure volition, the path 
which should unite them, he would never voluntarily use the con- 
scious power, which he felt within his reach, to influence her. 

Victoria took involuntary Italian lessons in linguistic floriculture 
all the way home. She chattered and laughed, glad of the relief 
from tension of feeling, and yet Dr. Garfoyle’s love had now really 
touched her for the first time. Her dominant thought hitherto 
had been — how good and pretty and grateful she was to him ; and 
how easily he would draw consolation from saintly sources if she 
gave him up ; and this persuasion gave her a pleasant sense of free- 
dom in her treatment of him. She had played with the thought of 
making him blessed, of proving to the saint the value of the sinner, 
when she holds in her pretty hands the recompense of the emotions. 
There had even been a sort of underlying contempt in it all — the 
contempt of a pretty woman who knows her own value for an 
elderly man Avhom she suspects of not knowing it. Perhaps she 
had never really quite meant anj^thing she had said to him. But 
now, she would not dare to trifle with him any longer. Hitherto 
she had refused to see anything in him but the priest ; now at 
length she had come face to face with the man, and henceforth 
could never ignore him. 

Then, too, she was really glad that she was to have the money. 
How, she need not marry the Hon. Lionel Brabazon-Farnaby a 
day sooner than she liked, nor indeed at all, unless she really did 
like. How, she need not take his horrid advice, and go with him 
to try her luck at Monte Carlo, or accept his introduction to one 
of those objectionable gambling clubs where ladies are admitted 
on the introduction of such fashionable gentlemen. She had truly 
shrunk from it all, and yet, without this aid, how was she to pay 
her bills in Hice, when Sir Peregrine, instead of sending her sup- 
plies, unhandsomely proposed to come himself — bronchial, unsympa- 
thetic, much-married, heavily paternal, close-fisted, and altogether 
detestable ? 

What a contrast to Dr. Garfoyle ! Truly he had been a minis- 
tering angel to her, and such a nice, modern sort of angel, with 
its wings glittering with golden bullion, and scattering bank-notes 
as it flew. There was certainly no other man living from whom 
she could have taken five hundred pounds quite calmly and with 
10 


146 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


scarcely any sense of obligation, beyond the evident duty of repay- 
ing it if she married someone else. 

‘‘It is some use, after a!l, to be one of The Guild of Widows,” 
she said, smiling softly to herself ; “ and, on the whole, I really 
think that I had rather be one of Dr. Garfoyle’s widows than 
either Mr. Farnaby’s or John Pengelley’s wife ; at least I would 
to-day — one can never answer for to-morrow. I’m glad I have 
discovered that to be a saint has but enriched his nature, where I 
fancied it had spoiled it.” 

But the despised Pye, after all, got none of the credit, 
undoubtedly due to her, for having taken the initiative in this 
temporary rectification of Mrs. Goldenour’s financial position. 
With a little more trust in Providence, or even in her own powers 
over the situation, Mrs. Pye might have spared herself the annoy- 
ance, and everyone else the distress and disaster which were to 
result from the mischievous letter which she had afterward de- 
spatched to Lady Peregrine Goldenour about her mistress’ manage- 
ment of her own affairs, both matrimonial and financial. 


CHAPTER XIII 

A BRIGHT MESSENGER 

On the morning of the following day, at eleven o’clock, Mr. 
Brabazon-Farnaby drove up to the villa in his fashionable phaeton, 
threw the reins to his groom, and, running lightly up the stone 
steps to the porch, stood tapping and calling in the entrance. 

“Well, are you ready, Mrs. Goldenour, to come and retrieve 
your fortunes? You are to accept me as your escort — that’s 
agreed upon, you know. What ! not ready yet ? My bays are 
bad at standing, and the fiies are already getting troublesome in 
this hot glare.” 

Victoria had stepped out of her drawing-room, in a loosely flow- 
ing dress, with a slow and languid air, as though the last thing on 
earth she was contemplating was the keeping of her appointment 
to drive with Mr. Brabazon-Farnaby to Monte Carlo. 

“ My poor little fortunes ! ” she said ; “ they are mended already. 


A BRIGHT MESSENGER 14 V 

How kind of you to remember them at all. So, being in funds, I 
mean to stay at home to-day, and to be both happy and good.” 

“ Nonsense,” he said, with rising annoyance. 

She raised her finely outlined eyebrows and looked at him. He 
saw and rightly interpreted the look as conveying a hint of the 
desirability on his part of self-control. 

“ Let us have this out,” he said ; and as he spoke he turned, and 
advancing to the edge of the terrace, shouted down an order to 
the groom to “ walk them up and down.” Then, stepping back 
into the house, he continued : “ Did we not agree the night before 
last that I was to call for you, to drive you over to Monte Carlo 
this morning, and back again later in the day ? Well, here I am, 
and you apparently have forgotten all about it. It’s my belief if 
a man ever did succeed in getting you to promise to go peaceablj’’ 
in double harness for one day, you would forget it or deny it on 
the next. You are quite incomprehensible. Perhaps you were 
imposing upon my credulity the other day, when you made sundry 
interesting financial revelations to me?” 

“Not at all,” she said; “it was all true. I was tottering on the 
verge of bankruptcy like so many other excellent people who spend 
their lives here in peace and comfort ; but I have changed my 
mind, I am not going with you to-day, so pray do not keep the 
dear bays pacing up and down for me.” 

“ And to what,” he enquired, with ill-suppressed anger, “ may one 
take the change in your financial prospects to be due ? Have you 
had a fortunate decease in your family ? ” 

“ To the change of wind,” she said mockingly. 

“ Cannot I persuade you to accept me as your driver, if not as 
your banker ? ” he asked. 

“ Neither as my banker, my adviser, nor even as my driver,” 
she answered crisply. 

Mr. Brabazon-Farnaby looked moodily down, and crunched the 
gravel beneath his shining boots in some evident perplexity. 

“ Then this, I take it, is why you were not at home to me last 
night ? ” 

“You know I am never at home when the rose-colored lamps 
are not lighted.” 

“I see it,” he said, suddenly lifting up his head, with the air of a 


148 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


man elated by the solution of an enigma; ‘‘I have guessed it : that 
elderly parson who was here the other evening is at the bottom of 
it all. When he passed on his road from the station I observed 
that you were considerably startled to see him, though 3 011 carried 
it oif very well. He is y^our uncle, your trustee, or guardian; he 
has come to put your affairs straight. The situation speaks for it* 
self. You don’t want me to put in an appearance while the reverend 
gentleman is here. Well, I’ll vanish ; let me know when I may 
have the honor of driving you again. But whom have we here, 
coming up the garden-path ? Another uncle ? More like a cousin 
this time. It looks like a house-agent, calling for the rent,” he 
added, in an aside to himself; “rigged himself out at Margate, 
regardless of expense.” 

Victoria, now at the drawing-room window with her arm around 
her boy, looked up and beheld no less a personage than John Pen- 
gelley himself, climbing the terraced walks, in a really startling 
suit of plumbago kerseymere. It undoubtedly was John Pengellej^, 
eager, hot, excited, large, and stout, canning parcels. In another 
minute he had displaced the fastidious Mr. Brabazon-Farnaby in 
the doorway, and was explaining almost incoherently to Victoria, 
that “ the Huntingdon Road had grown beastly dull,” and that he 
desired “ to see the carnival.” 

“ The carnival ! ” she said, laughing merrily. “ Why, next Sun- 
day will be Palm Sunday.” 

“I don’t understand Church matters,” he replied, reddening; 
“ fasting has never been a practice in our family. Perhaps it was 
the Regatta or the Battle of Flowers at Monte Carlo I wanted to 
see. I know it was something of the sort ; indeed, I have never 
been abroad before. I only got here last night ; and I waited till 
I had slept and made myself presentable, you know.” 

With these words he handed to Bruce two large boxes of marrons 
gla§ees which he had procured in Paris at the cost, so he stated; of 
losing his train, together with a box of chocolate-creams from Cam- 
bridge. The boy took them with a gracious, willing smile and 
pleasant thanks ; but placed them upon a side table, and left them 
behind him when he quitted the room. 

“ What an unnatural little chap !” John Pengelley said. “Try 
them yourself, Mrs. Goldenour ; I can recommend them.” 


A BRIGHT MESSENGER 


149 


Victoria did as he desired. Indeed, she quite astonished the 
newcomer by the unexpected kindness of her reception. She 
seemed quite pleased to see him. He had feared a diiferent and 
decidedly chilling greeting when he took the great step of coming 
out quite uninvited, and of taking her absolutely by surprise. He 
thought it as well, however, to hasten slowly and to defer the pro- 
posal he had come on purpose to renew, until he was surer of the 
meaning and of the continuance of her regard. He stayed to 
breakfast with her, and she permitted him afterward to accom- 
pany her for a stroll upon the Promenade des Anglais. There 
he made quite a typical figure of an English country gentleman of 
the stagey sort, for the delectation of the native inliabitants of 
Nice, if indeed any such were still to be found upon that cosmo- 
politan parade-ground. 

Well knowing his tastes, Victoria introduced him to Rumple- 
mayer’s, and permitted him to treat her to ices and confectionery 
at will. While so engaged, he begged her to tell him where to 
dine, as of course he could not trust his landlord for disinterested 
advice upon such a delicate subject ; not that,” he added, women 
were any good either to cook a dinner or to eat it.” But she must 
have some “competent gastronomic critic or culinary connoisseur” 
— she supplied the terms he lacked, as usual — among her male 
friends. That man, for instance, who was leaving the house as 
he entered it, and who had a phaeton with a pair of bays waiting 
in the road, “ all show and no substance there.” John Pengelley 
knew his sort: “kickshaws in the kitchen; finicking, dandified 
messing in the stables and harness-room, only fit for a lady’s dress- 
ing-room ; silver-plated harness and ridiculous fallals to hide the 
lack of good blood and breeding.” 

“ I should like,” said Mr. Pengelley, “ to have him, whatever his 
name may be, in my stables at North Hall for an hour. I’d soon 
make his lordship sit up, and show him something that would take 
the shine out of his circus-hacks ! What’s his name ? May one 
ask ? ” 

But if one might ask, another apparently might not answer. 
Victoria presumably did not hear, or would not speak. It was 
evident that she was out of spirits, and that her thoughts were 
busy with subjects remote from him and from his interests. 


150 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


When they retraced their steps to the villa, John Pengelley 
received no encouragement to re-enter the liouse. The fact was 
that, in anticipation of Sir Peregrine Goldenour’s threatened visit, 
Victoria was determined to part with Bruce, for the second time 
in his brief life; and the knowledge that she might have to live 
for a whole fortnight without his sunny presence had sunk her soul 
in anticipative sorrow, in a way that no other thing had power to 
do, save only the memory of the tragedy by which he had been 
left her sole treasure, the light of her eyes, the solace of her days 
and nights of loneliness. 

Dr. Garfoyle was in his own room the next day, and he was 
engaged in packing his things. He had determined not to return 
to England at once, but to go to Milan, and to be in the cathedral 
there on Easter Sunda}^ He could not tear himself away so soon. 
He must at least remain within reach of her possible summons. He 
must at least wait to learn whether Victoria did actually engage 
herself to marry Mr. Brabazon-Farnaby ; and he must ascertain 
the result of Sir Peregrine Goldenour’s unwelcome visit. He had 
not seen Victoria again since she drove away with the Italian. 
She had left him in the olive wood alone ; but not in the isolation 
of sorrow. The grief was there all the time, nay the anguish ; yet 
he was even then aware that that brackish river swept on and lost 
itself in an ocean of joy ; that the sorrow was a birth of love, a 
growing life, an apportionment of a vaster share in love’s own 
realm ; that he had indeed been crowned in that kingdom, though 
the crown was a crown of thorns. Still there was the deeply 
recognized consciousness of gain to himself in the gift of his love 
to her — in the very love itself. 

This she could not deprive him of — this enriching of his life, this 
possession in a large new share of life’s fulness. To care for her, 
to aid her, to stand by her and her child, to smooth her path if he 
must not walk in it beside her. The river of divine benignity in 
the consciousness of this power to bless overflowed his soul, and 
when his eyes grew moist it was with tears of suppressed joy in the 
realization of the oneness of life and love. 

Just then the door opened and Bruce stood before him. It was 
a dull hotel bedroom, bare and unadorned, but the boy appeared 
to Dr. Garfoyle framed in the doorway, with the brilliant sunlight 


A BRIGHT MESSENGER 


151 


catching his fair waving hair, like a beautiful messenger from some 
radiant sphere. 

“ Mother sends me to you,” he said, “ with her love. She lends 
me to you for a whole fortnight. You may take*me away where 
you will — only it must not be too far. See, she has written it all ; ” 
and he held out a dainty note. “ She said I was to tell you there 
was no one else in the whole world that she would trust me to but 
you. But you can read what she says.” So saying, the child 
jumped with agility upon the portmanteau and began pressing it 
down with good intention but slight effect, while his friend read, 
in Victoria’s clear bold handwriting, the words which the child had 
repeated — with the added entreaty that he would allow Bruce to 
sleep in his own room, that he would let her know where he pro- 
posed to take him, together with the assurance that she would send 
Mrs. Pye for him, wherever they might be, on the morning of the 
day that Sir Peregrine Goldenour’s visit should be ended. “ I must 
have the boy out of Sir Peregrine’s reach,” she added. ‘‘ I live in 
terror lest he should deprive me of him. He shall not even see the 
child. I implore you keep him safely for me till my own fate is 
decided ; but indeed, bereft of Bruce, I am nothing but a widowed 
mother ! See how great,” she added, “ is the sum of my love and 
confidence in you ! ” 

‘‘Now, where shall we go?” said the boy. “Oh, how nice it 
would be if only mother were coming too — but not Mrs. Pye, not 
Mr. Farnaby, and not the other gentleman who has just come here 
without any luggage but three boxes of sweets. You need only take 
half a ticket for me, you know ; my things are coming ; our gar- 
dener — a native of Arezzo and married to the cook — is to bring 
them directly. I can dress myself all but one string ; can you tie 
a bow ? Some men can’t; I can if it is in front. And shall we write 
to mother every day, till she says she will come too ? How shall 
we end our letters to her ? I shall say ‘ from your loving Bruce, 
and I send you a great many kisses ’ ; shall you put that too ? I 
have got a new suit, all white serge ; mother made it her own self, 
and embroidered it in crimson silk, and I am to put it on on Easter 
Sunday. Where shall we be then. Dr. Garfoyle ? ” 

“ We shall be in the cathedral at Milan, Bruce.” 

“ But that’s a town, do let us go into the country ; there is lots 


152 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


of time, because I am to stay thirteen whole days and two halves. 
Mother and I made it out together.” 

Then Dr. Garfoyle proceeded to explain to the boy that the cost 
to his mother was too great for anyone else selfislily to accept 
the pleasure of his company, and he suggested that Bruce should 
return as the bearer of such a message. The only result was 
another note, in which Victoria wrote : 

“ I do not believe that even you are capable of estimating what 
a sacrifice I make when I give you Bruce for a whole fortnight, and 
I do it with terrible depression, but I trust you absolutely, as I 
would trust no one else on earth. Still I have such awful misgivings 
in parting with him ; pray never let him out of your sight. He is 
so unconventional ; he thinks and acts for himself. There is never 
any knowing what he will take into his head to say or do next. 
He has his fits of inspiration, just as other children have their fits 
of temper. He might easily get into some scrape, in a foreign 
town, if not carefully watched, just from being too much of an 
angel to walk their common ways. Moreover, he possesses such an 
artistic nature that he instinctively feels impelled personally to 
complete a picture whenever he can do so, and he will quite inno- 
cently assume any prominent or unusual position whatever notice it 
may attract to him — whether favorable or the reverse — with such 
an end in view, just as any other boy would undertake a common 
hourly task.” 

For his part Bruce was resolute ; his mother and he had decided 
the matter, and he had evidently set his brave little will to the 
accomplishment of the genuine sacrifice. 

‘‘ I am the best thing mother has to give, she says. She promised 
me to you when I was ill, and people should always keep their 
promises.” 

Accordingly they started for Bordighera, not to be “ too far off,” 
as Victoria had said. 

There they rambled about for a week, the boy never leaving Dr. 
Garfoyle’s side. Together they explored all the country walks. 
Bruce had laid aside the sadness which at first seemed constantly 
to lie in wait for him in the thought of his absent mother, and his 
manner now had a strange charm as he eagerly led his friend to 
share some gentle triumph, some discovery that he had made in the 


A BRIGHT MESSENGER 


153 


wood or on the hillside ; as he led him to admire some new flower, 
to see some gorgeous beetle with wings of peacock blue or emerald 
green, and eyes that glittered like diamond stars ; or to dig out a 
land-shell, to unearth a trap-door spider, or to arrest a green frog 
in its progress through a clump of bushes of the prickly pear. 

Yet, with all Bruce’s frank gayety, and in spite of his vivid 
appreciation of material beauty in his surroundings, there lingered 
yet about this boy a power of unuttered memory, the penetrating 
influence of an unforgotten sorrow. A tragic past, unexpectedly 
rising to the surface and obtaining recognition as a potent influence 
over the life of a mere child, appealed to the heart more forcibly 
than when encountered only in the blended experience of an adult 
person. 

At the end of a week Dr. Garfoyle received a troubled letter 
from Victoria. 

‘‘ I ought never to have let the boy leave me ! ” she wrote. 
‘‘ He is my conscience and my guide. It is all over now ! Left to 
myself, I have drifted into an engagement with Mr. Brabazon- 
Farnaby. I was so lonely without Bruce, and John Pengelley 
made himself such a bore ; I believe I had no better reasons. The 
said John has gone back to North Hall now ; no doubt he will 
soon find consolation in what are called the pleasures of the table, 
and will promptly engage a wife who will share them with him. 
I will repay the sum I owe you directly I am married. Sir Pere- 
grine is due; he has happily had a relapse which has till now 
detained him. To his opposition to Mr. Farnaby must be attrib- 
uted my increase of inclination ; but pray keep my boy out of their 
way. I cannot fancy having him here under these changed rela- 
tions. Mr. Farnaby, though he suits me very well, has never 
taken any notice of the child; he does not care for boys. Between 
him and Sir Peregrine what shall I do ? The fact is, I am 
wretched. If Pd chosen for the boy’s sake— as I suppose a good 
mother should — I should have chosen you. Let me tell Bruce 
myself. Forgive me, I do not like to think of you as I left you in 
the olive wood ; but I told you I changed color like a veritable 
chameleon. When the boy was no longer before my sight day 
and night, I degenerated and grew disheartened, and now I am at 
my lowest level. Go to Milan, as you wished, for Easter Sunday, 


154 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


and take my darling with you to console you, if indeed you need 
consolation, and are not too much of a saint to need any such lower 
form of comfort as my boy’s lovely face may aiford. I give you 
the best thing that I have to give, better a million times than the 
gift of my poor self. I am not worth regretting, being well lost. 
I will reclaim my love myself, in the person of my boy, so soon 
as Sir Peregrine’s departure leaves me free to move.” 

So to Milan Dr. Garfoyle and the child moved on together, and 
so long as this beautiful boy, with the starlight in his wonderful 
eyes, was still by his side. Dr. Garfoyle could not actually realize 
that he had lost the promise of the mother. 


CHAPTER XIV 

IN MILAN CATHEDRAL 

On Easter Sunday morning Bruce dressed himself with delight 
in the soft white clothing, embroidered in blood-red silk by his 
mother’s hands, and Dr. Garfoyle carefully led him to the cathedral. 

The sun was hidden by dark masses of cloud, and the shadow 
deepened as they entered the wonderful forest of marble. Suddenly 
the tramontana, which had been blowing on and olf for the last 
three days, sprang up with renewed fury ; thick eddies of dust 
pursued them into the cathedral, but the black clouds were riven, 
and the glorious sun shone forth for an instant, bathing the marble 
spires and columns in a brilliant ocean of dazzling light. This 
rapidly faded, and again the sky was overcast with fleecy clouds, 
gathering and melting away into the distance, but coming up again 
and again, and all the while the shifting lights and shadows were 
chasing each other across the pavements and pillars of the interior 
of the Duomo, in a fitful, erratic dance ; sometimes touching the 
soul with darkness deep as night, sometimes uplifting it with rapt- 
ure like the joy of sunrise upon the mountains. 

Both the man and child were keenly, though variously, alive to 
the penetrating influence of the time and place. Dr. Garfoyle was 
aware of an unusual glow at the heart, of a new power and fire in 
his uplifted thought, which held nothing in common with the or- 


IN MILA.N CATHEDRAL 


155 


dinary excitement of mere imaginative ecstasies. As he listened 
to the stirring music of the mass, and beheld the mighty crowd of 
worshippers, mingled with visitors of all nationalities, crowding 
into the sacred building, the infection of religious emotion over- 
whelmed him. The narrow limits of human personality seemed 
beaten down by the inrush of divine spirit ; and yet every human 
being stood out in the white light, clear, separate, and distinct. 
Even the childish figures were prominent and sharply outlined. In 
the gutters round St. Amwell’s all the poor wretches played indis- 
criminately heaped together ; here, every childish figure was shown 
up with its own light and color, as that which it was truly intended 
to be. But not among the whole company there assembled was 
there one figure so individual as that of the boy who silently stood 
by Dr. Garfoyle’s side, an intent observer of the shifting scene. 

Dr. Garfoyle looked at Bruce’s rapt face several times, and won- 
dered what shape his thoughts were taking. He looked as though 
amid the impressions which were assailing his intelligence from 
the external pageant displayed before him, conceptions pure as 
snowflakes were falling upon his receptive spirit from on high ; as 
though, while his outer ear listened to the marvellous music of the 
elaborate service, his inner sense caught the whisper of angels as 
they passed along. 

The service of the mass was over ; the atmosphere of the cathe- 
dral was heavy with incense, and loaded with the breath of adora- 
tion. The vibration of the mighty organ-pipes still rolled in dying 
^ waves of inarticulate sound upon the upper air ; the densely packed 
multitude began to disperse. An oppressive silence brooded over 
the shifting masses of people, now forming into groups. In the 
side chapels and among the pillars it reigned, but chiefly yonder in 
the very centre 'of the nave before the high altar, where, in an 
absolutely untenanted space, upon one of the large squares of 
Napoleon’s stone pavement, a solitary human figure knelt upon a 
prie Dieu ” chair. The shifting margins of vacant space between 
himself and the moving groups of people were filled with shade 
and color, but a single shaft of bright sunlight shot downward 
upon his black head, touching it as with a sword of flame. All 
the angles of the motionless figure were sharply outlined by it ; 
accentuated even to the outlines of his shadow. 


156 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


The man knelt almost as tliough he were a carven figure, or if 
he stirred at all his movements were those of a man in a trance. 
Deep dejection marked his attitude ; people came and went ; no 
one approached him. His eyes were fixed upon the high altar with 
a glassy stare, as the eyes of one who, seeing, saw not. The man 
appeared to be an Italian of the petty shop-keeping class. He was 
evidently no peasant. 

It soon became evident to Dr. Garfojde that Bruce’s attention 
was painfully arrested by the lonely, melancholy figure, which 
certainly was extremely remarkable in its isolation, while behind, 
around, and above, luminous spaces were filled with a motlej^ 
crowd in constant flux, obtaining ingress and egress to and from 
the cathedral by the various entrances and side doors, lifting and 
dropping the heavy leather curtains, and pausing incessantly at 
side-altars in all parts of the sacred edifice. This kneeling, motion- 
less man appeared like a blur, a blot upon the shifting color and 
harmonious movement of the scene. 

An English lady with her husband, standing near Dr. Garfoyle 
and Bruce Goldenour, was also attracted by the same sight, and 
with the habitual freedom of the Englishwoman abroad, addressed 
a question upon the subject to a bystander, a woman evidently 
attached to chairs in the place. The Italian matron replied, in her 
own tongue, that the man was a “penitent” who had been keeping 
a “ novena,” or nine days’ penance, for some grave fault. 

“For nine days,” she said, “ the poor wretch had been condemned 
to kneel upon that spot alone, save during the celebration of the 
high mass. The spot upon which, as madam has seen, his chair 
stands is then crowded with excellent worshippers ; but from earl}’- 
morning till late at night, he may be seen there. This is, however,” 
she added, “ the last day of his penitence ; when the clock strikes 
twelve he will be free ; at that instant ; and this afternoon the 
children will all come, even to the least ‘bambino,’ to kiss the 
recumbent figure of Christ, which will be displayed just where the 
man now kneels. Madam should come and see the ceremony, and 
bring her pretty boy in white and red ; it was instituted by the 
great cardinal — by the Cardinal Borromeo. What did the penitent 
do ? Ah, who knows ? He is, without doubt, a man of violent 
disposition ; a native of Arezzo, so they say.” 


IN MILAN CATHEDRAL 


157 


“ His temper must be awfully aggravated by now, poor devil,” 
said the English gentleman, to whom his wife translated what had 
been said. ‘‘ I am sure mine would be.” 

‘‘ To kneel there sick and hungry, and be stared at for hours by 
an inquisitive crowd, a mark for all slander ; to be avoided like a 
leper ! ” added his wife. 

The words were scarcely whispered when Dr. Garfoyle, who 
heard them, was aware that, moved by some sudden inexplicable 
impulse, Bruce had quitted his side and was already halfway 
across the intervening space, which separated them from the object 
of their regard. He made an immediate movement to recall the 
boy, but it was too late ; the child’s conduct could neither have 
been foreseen nor prevented. He darted across the open space 
between where Dr. Garfoyle and the English couple stood, and 
swiftly but noiselessly approaching the kneeling figure, knelt down 
beside him : a little white figure upon the marble floor. 

Then Dr. Garfoyle suddenly remembered Victoria’s warning. 
Had she not told him that her boy’s conduct was apt to be dictated 
by motives and impulses which were not superficially obvious, but 
which were spiritually or artistically dictated or conceived. Dr. 
Garfoyle became supremely uneasy, nay more — he was greatly 
alarmed at the child’s escape from his immediate control. To 
follow and bring him back was impossible. He could not further 
disturb the devotions of the faulty native by the intrusion of a 
foreigner, a casual visitor, and, worst of all, of a heretic ; for 
whatever his own ideas as to his church might be. Dr, Garfoyle 
was naturally well enough aware that in the eyes of this bigoted 
man he was nothing better than a heathen man and a reprobate ; 
and the child was a heretic too, and his presence could not but be 
a grave offence to the devotee. 

Bruce’s conception of the situation as he had comprehended it 
from the lady’s translation to her husband was pathetic in the 
extreme. He no more realized that he was an intruder coming 
between this sinner and Heaven, than he had felt that he thrust 
himself between the spring flowers and the sky, when he trod the 
pathways of the woods at Bordighera and surprised the secrets of 
the opening blossoms on the terraces. 

His vision was too engrossing and too elevated to permit him 


158 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


any sense of unsuitableness, or any feeling of shyness in his attempt 
to realize it. The emotions stirred in his childish breast were too 
pure in their intensity to leave any room for self-consciousness. 
And any lack of sympathy on the part of the bystanders was due 
to no failure on the child’s part to translate an exquisitely pure and 
noble impulse into sympathetic action, but to their own remote- 
ness from the loftier standpoint of emotion expressed by the boy. 
The eye sees nothing but what the heart first feels. 

The English lady and gentleman appeared mainly struck with 
the artistic aspect of the scene. 

“ What an exquisite j^icture ! what a lovely boy, with the light 
shining on his fair rings of hair, in his soft, white clothing ; it’s like 
pure ‘ white Samite, mystic, wonderful ! ’ How silent and motion- 
less he is as he kneels upon the pavement by the black figure tower- 
ing above him ! The man seems to all appearance unconscious of 
his presence ! See,” she added, turning to her husband, “ I don’t 
suppose such a picture was ever seen in this place before. It is 
really most striking.” 

But Dr. Garfoyle, in ever growing anxiety, turned to the Italian 
custodian of chairs, and enquired of her how long it would be before 
he might dare to reclaim the child. 

‘‘ You can be easy, sir,” she said. “ When the hour of noon strikes 
the novena will be ended; there is but a short time to wait ; but 
who knows how he will take what the child has done ? He is a 
man of fierce passions. Take the boy home, sir, if he is yours, the 
moment you can get him by the hand.” 

“ Can you not go and fetch him for me ? I will remunerate 
you.” 

‘‘ I dare not, sir. It is forbidden to approach a penitent or to 
disturb him during the hours of his act of penitence. I dare not 
do it ; none dare. We shall but divert his anger to ourselves. 
Perhaps he will forgive a child an act of foolish pity — who can 
say ? ” 

Then Dr. Garfoyle fell upon his knees where he was, overcome 
by what seemed even to himself to be purely unreasonable terror 
for the safety of the precious child confided to his care. Then an 
idea occurred to him. Approaching as near to the tableau vivant, 
to the dark figure of the man and the white radiance of the child. 


IN MILAN CATHEDRAL 


159 


as was likely to be permitted, he, kneeling still, fixed his eyes 
upon the boy, striving by a strenuous exertion of powerful volition 
to bring him back to his side, as it were by some occult exercise of 
magnetic force ; but he failed utterly ; some power greater than 
his own seemed to hold the boy ; his gaze was intently fixed upon 
a luminous spot to the right of the altar. To all that went on 
around him he appeared utterly insensible, but his whole expression 
was one of rapt joy and wonder while he waited at the feet of the 
penitent, like an angel of whom patient waiting prior to glad ser- 
vice was demanded. 

Then, when all his efforts failed. Dr. Garfoyle’s spirits subsided, 
and he also remained motionless through the brief remaining 
interval of time which had seemed so long to traverse ; and his 
free thoughts soared untrammelled in imploring benedictions on 
the child. It is to be feared that he forgot the penitent and the 
greater needs of his soiled nature ! 

As the last stroke of the clock resounded through the cathedral 
the man crossed himself, rose hurriedly, picked up the chair upon 
which his knees had stiffened, restored it to the attendant, and 
apparently quitted the building without looking round. Bruce 
returned to Dr. Garfoyle with an ineffable expression of serene 
content shining in his countenance, and, in answer to his guardian’s 
quick representation that he should not have left his side without 
leave, he replied in wonder that “ the poor man was so unhappy 
being punished all alone, and that he went to say his prayers by 
him and to keep him company.” 

“ You should not have done it, Bruce,” said Dr. Garfoyle, draw- 
ing him on one side and speaking low in his ear. ‘‘We are in a 
strange place, in a strange country where we should be very care- 
ful not to give offence : people may not understand your conduct.” 

“ Whj^,” said the boy, “ I knew the man, it was our gardener ; 
he is our poor cook’s husband, and sometimes she is afraid he will 
kill her, and she tries to get away from him. He has a garden 
and a business at Arezzo — but his wife says that he is such a bad 
man, that his conduct is cruel ; he is greedy of gain, and all his 
bargains are good for himself and bad for others, and she prays to 
the saints to rid her of him. It is terrible to hear such things. I 
always go away when she talks to Pye ; I have feared him very 


160 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


much at Nice, and I might not have dared to go near him now 
only,” he added in a still lower tone, “a wonderful thing happened. 
Dr. Garfoyle, my father told me to do it. I saw him; I often do, 
you know. I have told you so before. He was standing up above 
there, on the right, and he smiled at me and showed me the pic- 
ture of what I was to do. He always does like that, you know. 
So I could not ask you first. Dr. Garfoyle, because my father had 
already shown me what I was to do.” 

By this time they had gained the exit by one of the side doors 
which opened upon the marble portico. The people whom they 
met, coming and going, all regarded the boy with cold curiosity or 
contempt ; touching each other and muttering as he passed with 
his guardian ; and Dr. Garfoyle, hoping that the man might have 
quitted the cathedral, lingered just inside the doorway for a con- 
siderable time. When at length he did issue forth, at the top of 
the semicircular flight of marble steps, he found an angry knot of 
vituperating Italians gathered, like a swarm of excited bees. 

The crowd was gaining in cohesion and increasing in volume 
and volubility of speech every moment ; and, at the instant that 
Dr. Garfoyle and his charge appeared, from the heart of the 
throng rushed upon them the man in question — furious, gesticulat- 
ing, incoherent, in blind, mad rage. The people made way for him 
instantly. He had lost all the advantages which he had intended 
to derive from the performance of his penance. He would have to 
do it all over again. It was entirely wasted. From his point of 
view the heretic child had mocked and insulted him even in the 
Duomo. This and much more which Dr. Garfoyle was unable to 
catch, in the impure local lingo which the Italian used, assailed his 
ears. Bruce’s face grew white with terror and consternation ; he 
could not comprehend what was the cause of the outbreak, nor 
how his conduct had produced it. No glorified facher directed 
him now ; he was no longer an inspired messenger, but a timid, 
shrinking child, who, with tears in his eyes, clung to his companion. 
As for Dr. Garfoyle, his one thought was to penetrate the crowd 
and to escape by means of a street vehicle. He did indeed attempt 
with his stiff, unfamiliar tongue to enter into some explanation or 
even apology for the offence so innocently given ; but the attempt 
only enraged the vindictive being, who received his words with 


IN MILAN CATHEDEAL 


161 


curses aud abuse of tbe vilest, as was evident from tone and man- 
ner, though happily the sense was left to be guessed by English ears. 

Dr. Garfoyle now caught the boy up in his strong arms and 
made a determined effort to force a passage through the crowd. 
But it had increased with incredible rapidity — was as excitable and 
as vibrantly sympathetic with national prejudice as an emotional 
race in presence of an offending foreign element is apt to become. 
That few of them knew the cause of the disturbance mattered 
nothing to them ; it was enough that some insult had been shown 
by travelling Protestant English people to good Catholics wor- 
shipping in the cathedral. The English man and woman prowling 
about the cathedral, with red guide-books, talking when prohibited 
and disturbing the faithful at the most solemn parts of the service 
unless actually restrained by authority from doing so, were suffi- 
ciently familiar and hated figures ; and it needed no effort of imagi- 
nation, of national sympathies, or of religious bigotry to inflame an 
antipathetic mob against the intruders. But when firmly grasping 
the child a second time Dr. Garfoyle made a renewed attempt to 
effect his escape, the mood of the crowd had characteristically 
changed ; they were disposed to regard the whole thing as a joke, 
to amuse themselves at the expense of the strangers, though it 
might be in a mischievous manner. They barred his passage, 
laughing and jeering ; no longer hostile, but with more than a 
spark of malice in their mirth. Whichever way he turned he was 
hemmed in. 

At that instant something happened. The madman, for such the 
furious wretch might be considered, made a sudden forward move- 
ment, well known to his compatriots. Suddenly the cry arose, 
intelligible even to English ears:, 

‘‘ Take care ! Take care ! He has a knife ! ” and, before Dr. 
Garfoyle could change his intention, a woman’s piercing cry smote 
his ears above all the uproar around ; it made his heart stand still. 

At the same moment that he heard the words repeated on all 
sides, “ He has stabbed the child ! ” Victoria burst through the 
throng, scattering it to right and to left. She seized the boy, who 
now lay prostrate in Dr. Garfoyle’s arms, his fair head drooping 
upon his shoulder, a bright stream of blood flowing over the white 
garments which her own hands had worked. 

11 


162 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


Victoria took the apparently dying child in her arms, and with- 
out further demonstration of the agony which possessed her bore 
him through the now unresisting crowd. The people were aghast 
now at the dramatic representation of cruelty practised upon a 
helpless being ; tears of sympathy were shed by the women ; mur- 
murs of compassion rippled around ; for the populace had very 
naturally taken the Englishman, and not the child, to have been 
the victim sought by the avenger. 

“It is the mother ! It is the mother ! ” was heard on all sides, 
and the words were sufficient for the Italian women present. “ Ah, 
God ! ” some of them added, “what a beautiful lady to have for a 
husband that plain o\di padre ! ” 

At once a carriage appeared as though by magic ; helpful hands 
pushed them into it; kind e^^es smiled upon them through pitiful 
showers of tears. 

“JS'’ la madre!'^'’ was sufficient now for the dullest woman 
present. But Dr. Garfoyle’s presence of mind and stern sense of 
righteous indignation could not make him neglect the pursuit of 
retributive justice, even in that supreme moment. The assassin 
had disappeared, favored no doubt by the populace; but Dr. Gar- 
foyle caught sight of the English couple prowling about on the 
outskirts of the crowd, and he despatched the husband and wife 
for an English doctor, H. B. M.’s consul, and the commissary of 
police to whom to make a report at his hotel. 

How Victoria came to be upon the spot, and to be — as she evi- 
dently had been — an eye-witness of the whole scene. Dr. Garfoyle 
had no time to consider. It was his first care to ascertain that the 
child yet lived in the brief transit between the cathedral and the 
hotel. Neither Victoria nor he spoke to each other, save that he 
gave, and she immediately observed, some professional directions 
as to her handling of the unconscious child. 


OF FRIENDSHIPS 


163 


CHAPTER XV 

OF FRIENDSHIPS 

Dr. Garfoyle bore the child to his room, and laid him on his 
bed ; a hasty examination convinced him that the wound was 
superficial. His position in Dr. Garfoyle’s arms had been his pro- 
tection ; the assassin’s knife had first encountered the resistance 
offered by Dr. Garfoyle’s own coat-sleeve, which it had penetrated 
before reaching the child. Moreover, it had happened that the boy 
wore a long silk Indian scarf or cummerband wound round and 
round his slender figure, beneath his light woollen clothing, and 
these folds of silk had also been of service in turning the blade and 
making it take a downward direction. It had thus been prevented 
from penetrating the slender ribs, causing only a simple flesh 
wound. 

Hever was Dr. Garfoyle more thankful for the medical education 
which enabled him to diagnose the case for himself without waiting 
in unspeakable anxiety for the arrival of the English doctor, whom 
the friendly English couple were to send. 

The boy was conscious now, but in a fearful state of nervous 
terror. He only seemed partially aware of what had happened, 
and, strangely enough, he confused the memory of his father’s 
tragic death with this affair in the cathedral ; thought that he him- 
self had been wounded in a railway accident, and declared over and 
over again that he had seen his father in the church where the light 
streamed down from the great window. Then he began to w^eep 
for his mother, whom he evidently had not recognized as being 
present, and Dr. Garfoyle turned to summon her ; but, almost 
before the words were pronounced, Victoria came forward and 
revealed herself by the bedside. She had feared to excite Bruce’s 
attention before. 

Dr. Garfoyle raised his head in thankfulness too deep for words. 


164 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


wondering what had brought her to Milan so soon, but having no 
opportunity of asking her. Her face was deadly pale — as pale as the 
child’s own ; but she was as calm and composed, in the urgency of 
her great love, as though she had been a hospital nurse come to 
undertake the case. She bent down and kissed her boy’s tender 
little hands and feet with a perfectly tearless face. 

“Now mother has come,” she said, “ you will be quite well again, 
Bruce. She has come to take care of you. You see, she knew she 
would be wanted.” 

She held the child without tears or flinching, while the inch-long 
stab was examined and dressed. No vital organ had been touched, 
but there were, of course, all the secondary risks of fever and ner- 
vous shock ; more especially in the case of a child so highly sensi- 
tive and with such a finely balanced nervous organization as this 
one possessed. 

When the English doctor arrived he calmly took the two people 
for husband and wife, and addressed all his instructions to Victoria 
under that assumption ; but such a trivial concern as this was 
utterly indifferent to them both. When at length she and Dr. 
Garfoyle found themselves for a moment alone in the adjoining 
room, he approached her holding out his hands and saying : 

“ You know I would have given my life for Bruce’s, over and 
over again. Have you heard how it happened?” 

“I know it,” she said ; “I was there and saAv it all. I warned 
you that the boy’s actions could not be counted on as might those 
of other children ; he imagined, no doubt, that his father directed 
him. He is subject to these impulses, or imaginations, whatever 
they may be called ; half his time he obeys me, and the otlier half 
he either is, or fancies himself to be, in communication with his 
father — and what he may do then I never can predict. This only I 
can safely say, that at all times his conduct seems governed by purer 
motives and inspired from some higher source than mine.” 

“ But you — how came you there ? ” he asked. “ And what about 
Mr. Farnab}'' ? ” 

“ Letters from England brought me here. I had intended com- 
ing on Wednesday, but yesterday I received news from Sir Pere- 
grine Goldenour, so important that I told Brabazon I should leave 
Nice at once, and must communicate with 3’^ou. I arrived this morn- 


OF FRIENDSHIPS 


165 


ing, leaving Pye to follow. I entered the cathedral when the service 
was oyer, and I saw Bruce keeeling, to my terror, rapt in one of his 
mystic dreams, in the centre of the nave. I could not get near to 
you for the people, and all the signs that I made to you failed to 
attract j^our attention.” 

“ Then you saw that I could not restrain him,” he said. “ He 
could not be dearer to me if indeed he were my own son. I entreat 
you to believe that I have indeed been faithful to my charge.” 

“ There is no life for me if I lose him,” she said. “ I am his 
mother before I am any man’s wife ; before I have any duties 
toward any other being on earth. Listen to me. Dr. Garfoyle ; you 
need not imagine that my engagement to Mr. Brabazon-Farnaby is 
going to make the slightest difference. If my child wants me, you 
may count on me. I will hold him in my arms so long as there is 
breath in his frail little bod}^ or knowledge in his sweet spirit to 
seek the support of my love : but if he dies, if his father calls him 
back, it will be to punish me for the choice I have made, and then 
I too will die and go back to them both ; for, in truth, I have no 
prospect of joy in this world and no life but in his.” 

Had she so soon realized that she had made a mistake in her 
selection of the Hon. Lionel Brabazon-Farnaby ? Dr. Garfoyle 
wondered, as he pressed her hand. 

“ We must speak of these things afterward,” she said, turning 
to re-enter the darkened room, while Dr. Garfoyle descended to 
interview H. B. M.’s consul and the commissary of police in the 
hotel salon below. 

With the English visitors to assist him, he gave a personal 
description of the native of Arezzo, signed a document in attesta- 
tion of the circumstances which had led to the assault, and received 
the sympathetic remarks of the authorities. 

Through all there ran a jarring note which conveyed their sense 
of the fact that English people never did know how to behave in 
foreign cathedrals, and English clergymen least of all. Further, 
there was the unexpressed opinion that the boy must have been 
execrably reared not to know how to comport himself with more 
conventional propriety in public places, and not to be more com- 
pletely under the command of his guardians than he certainly 
appeared to be. 


166 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


As a matter of fact the incensed bigot so successfully laid low, 
until the enquiries for him were over, that he was never brought 
to justice at all ; and the affair, after having been discussed in the 
English circle for ten days, was then as completely forgotten as 
thougli it liad never been. There were, no doubt, plenty of 
Italians of the lower class who could at any moment have pro- 
duced the man, and of course his priest knew well enough where 
he was ; a knowledge which he probably shared with Mrs. Pye 
who, when she arrived upon the scene, declared that he had gone 
no further than back to Nice. There, as his wife was still em- 
ployed as caretaker by the owner of the villa, it may be supposed 
that he made Mrs. Goldenour unwittingly contribute to his support 
during the rest of the season. Those who had witnessed the 
cowardly assault had indeed been sympathetically stirred for the 
minute on behalf of the beautiful boy; but it was one thing to 
deprecate the severity of a punishment arbitrarily inflicted, though 
possibly deserved, and quite another thing to subject a fellow- 
countryman to the inconvenience of a legal investigation of his 
misconduct, for the sake of a foreigner. Moreover, the use of the 
knife for the speedy avenging of insults and injuries was a prized, 
though covert, privilege with the lowest classes of the Italian popu- 
lation ; and they were not disposed to risk it, since it might at any 
time be convenient to have it in reserve. 

Mrs. Pye for her part was of the decided opinion that the boy 
would have been far better in the care of, and minding the pre- 
cepts of, the common British nurse, rather than in obeying the 
suggestions of a father in the skies. Mrs. Pye decidedly held the 
view that “ angels were not to be relied upon,” and that if they 
wanted to get a place on earth as “ useful, domestic, ministering 
spirits,” they would suifer from the competition of the embodied 
and experienced nurse. In the eye of the authorities the circum- 
stance was regrettable, no doubt ; but the vulgar were of opinion 
that those Protestant strangers had far better stay at home in 
their own foggy island, and worship their own inferior divinity in 
their own heretical conventicles in their own contemptible way. 

Day after day the child lay languishing, nursed by his mother and 
his friend with unfailing hourl}^ devotion. The weather grew very 
hot, and at nights the delirium from which the boy suffered rose to 


OF FEIENDSHIPS 


167 


a painful height. His father, and the tragedy of his fatlier’s death, 
were ever present to his imagination, coupled with the recent affair 
in which he himself had played so unfortunate a part. Sometimes 
he knelt on the pavement by his father’s side, and saw his father 
meet his death tliere at the hands of the Italian assailant; some- 
times he changed places, and himself fell in the agonies of death 
upon the platform of a London railway station. To all the inco- 
herence of these imagined agonies night after night did the mother 
listen with a wrung heart, but with a calm outward appearance ; 
and night after night did Dr. Garfoyle stand by her, suffering 
doubly in thought and affection for her and for the child. 

The situation was a trying and anomalous one, but there was 
scanty time for the consideration of the position, and no time what- 
ever for speech of any 6tl)er sort than such as concerned tlie patient. 
Happily Dr. Garfoyle had been able to make arrangements to remain 
for a few days longer in Italy; but he would not prolong his stay 
a day beyond the requisite moment. 

While wondering at Mr. Farnaby’s slowness in putting in an 
appearance. Dr. Garfoyle was himself only too deeply aware that to 
Bruce’s mother all men on earth were at this moment but shadows. 
For her, all love on earth had again resolved itself into the maternal. 
He had no illusions where slie was concerned. 

But on an early day Mr. Brabazon-Farnaby arrived, and sent up 
word of his presence. Victoria declined to leave the boy’s bedside, 
and sent down Mrs. Pye. The response was a request that “ Dr. 
Garfoyle would favor Mr. Farnaby with a few moments’ conver- 
sation.” 

Some men are as much out of place in a house where there is ill- 
ness or death as a butterfly, or let us say a parrot perched upon a 
coffin, and Brabazon-Farnaby was of this order. He escaped the 
necessity of solving the darker problems of life by simply shirking 
them, and he found a good deal to say for his method. 

Dr. Garfoyle observed him critically as he entered the room, and 
found in him a man undoubtedly handsome, upright, and distin- 
guished in bearing, well brushed, faultlessly dressed, with irre- 
proachable mustache and complacent air. 

“Tiresome business this ! ” he said, standing by the formal marble 
table in the middle of the hotel salon. “ Always some nuisance or 


168 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


Other where there are children ! Measles, or mumps, or misfortunes 
of some sort ! Bruce should be sent to school as soon as he is about 
again. I told Victoria plainly on the day on which she left that I 
could not undertake him. In fact, I really am placed in a very 
awkward position by Victoria’s refusal to see me, more so indeed 
than I feel altogether able to explain to you. Dr. Garfoyle. I must 
apologize for intruding on your time at all. I think it awfully dis- 
interested of you to have played the part of tutor. I am sure Vic- 
toria and myself should never have arrived otherwise at a mutual 
understanding, with the boy always about. I don’t wish to say any- 
thing against him, I am sure, poor little chap. No one can be sorrier 
than I am now that he has come to grief ; but still there is reason 
in all things, and he was always a disturbing element, and always 
endeavoring to attract attention ; for my own part, I fully agree 
with Sir Peregrine Goldenour as to the necessity for his being 
immediately sent to school. I abhor the Little Lord Fauntleroy 
style ; it is the type that all young widows aim at nowadays in 
bringing up their sons.” 

Di\ Garfoyle took the liberty of differing from Mr. Brabazon- 
Farnaby as to Bruce’s possessing any qualification in common with 
that artificial young hero, and the conversation drifted toward a 
fresh issue. The Hon. Lionel wished to know if Dr. Garfoyle 
had heard from Mrs. Goldenour the contents of those family letters 
from England which had sent her flitting in such haste to Milan. 

“ To tell the truth, Victoria was never altogether open with 
me,” he said; “she wished to consult you. Dr. Garfoyle; she 
seemed to look upon you in the light of an adviser — in fact, if you 
will excuse my saying so, I took you for her uncle on your first 
arrival ; presumed you were her boy’s guardian, and so forth.” 

“ Only a friend,” objected the older man stiffly. 

“Well, I’m tolerant of friendships between men and women: 
can quite enter into that sort of thing, especially when the choice 
is so desirable. I hope that the present arrangement may be con- 
tinued in the future, and extended so as to include my own un- 
worthy self.” 

Dr. Garfoyle declined to commit himself, and Mr. Brabazon- 
Farnaby, angered at being left to pay all the expenses of a conver- 
sation which he had solicited, took up an impatient, irritable tone. 


OF FRIENDSHIPS 


169 


‘‘ All this,” he said, has thrown me very much upon my back. 
As a ‘ friend ’ of Mrs. Goldenour’s, I conclude I am within the 
limits of prudence when I speak freely to you. Dr. Garfoyle. You 
are of course aware that she had agreed to our marriage taking 
place in May, soon after we might all have returned to England. 
She made no concealment as to the state of her financial matters 
with me, but all that was nothing to me. Every penny tliat comes 
to her from her first husband I should have wished her to spend 
upon the boy. I understand that he will inherit a considerable 
fortiuie at his majority, and meanwhile I am quite disposed to con- 
sider that his training should be governed by the wishes of his 
legal guardian. Sir Peregrine Goldenour. Victoria must be made 
to hear reason as to that. But meanwhile she has taken offence on 
the point, and refuses to see me. She has never even informed me 
of the result of her latest communication upon the subject with Sir 
Peregrine, and that gentleman himself has failed to put in an 
appearance. I cannot indefinitely prolong my stay in these parts. 
Nice is growing hot and unwholesome, and people who belong to 
my set are gone. I am of course more than ready to sacrifice my- 
self in Mrs. Goldenour’s service, but I have not even the satisfac- 
tion of knowing that I am fulfilling her desires. You appear, 
pardon me, to be indispensable in the present crisis, doubtless be- 
cause you are both a priest and a physician, while I am neither. I 
cannot, of course, presume to vie with such double attractions ; 
but I should be grateful to you, since you have the entree which is 
denied to me, if you could procure for me some indication as to 
how long it is likely that Mrs. Goldenour may wish to remain here 
in your care ; and what arrangements it is probable that it may 
suit her to make with reference to the future.” 

‘‘ You must excuse me if I decline to act the part you propose to 
assign me, Mr. Brabazon-Farnaby,” said Dr. Garfoyle stiffly. If 
you have anything of the sort to communicate to Mrs. Goldenour, 
you had better say it by letter, since she declines to see anyone at 
present.” 

“Pd give my right hand for half an hour’s conversation with her ! 
The whole of the rest of the women in the universe may go to 
perdition for me ! I thouglit, when that bucolic fellow went back 
to his mother and his stables, that I should be left in peace for the 


170 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


rest of my natural life ; but though I don’t care to make such a 
confession, yet you will probably understand me when I say to you 
plainly, Dr. Garfoyle, that I consider Mrs. Goldenour a proficient 
in the art of tormenting any man who is fortunate — or shall we 
say unfortunate — enough to attract her attention, to a really 
remarkable pitch of perfection. For a good woman, now— I speak 
advisedly — for a good woman and a woman whom one desires to 
share one’s life with, she has mastered all the feminine arts of 
provocation and instability in a surprising degree. Positively Mr. 
John Pengelley has at any rate this decided advantage over me, 
that he has got his quietus, while I am, it seems, simply forgotten ; 
of no more importance at all than last season’s partner at a 
dance ! ” 

“ There is but one answer which I am in a position to make 
you, Mr. Farnaby,” said Dr. Garfoyle with grave dignity. “ Come 
with me. Mrs. Goldenour is at present absent from her child’s 
room, while the boy is asleep. Come and see him. May I ask you 
to be as quiet as possible ? ” 

“ Not necessary ! not necessary at all ! ” said Mr. Farnaby, 
drawing back with manifest repugnance. ‘‘I always take these 
things for granted, illness and that sort of thing, I mean ; ‘least 

seen soonest ”’ He was hunting for a word, feeling that 

“ mended ” would not be quite appropriate, when in spite of remon- 
strance he found himself silently following his conductor into a 
silent room, where upon a sniall bed, drawn out into the middle of 
the room, and facing the window, the boy lay. He was changed 
beyond Mr. Farnaby’s powers of recognition. The fair hair lay 
upon the pillow, surrounding a face which had no longer any 
childlike roundness of outline, but in which every feature was 
accentuated ; lines of suffering were pencilled around the dainty 
mouth, the nostrils were drawn in, the complexion was more than 
ever of the hue of alabaster. 

Mr. Farnaby noticed that the little couch was covered with a 
delicate silk quilt, doubtless of Victoria’s fashioning, of the color 
of the sea by moonlight. In his button-hole was a single pale rose; 
he took it out and placed it on the silken covering just beside the 
child’s fingers. All the surroundings, indeed, spoke of Victoria’s 
presence ; and it had transformed the common hotel room into a 


OF FRIENDSHIPS 


171 


dainty hiding-place, a shrine for her fair treasure. The child’s light 
breath was drawn quickly and uneasily, and his mind was visibl}'^ 
agitated even in this his slight sleep. 

Dr. Garfoyle drew the curtain across the window, and then, when 
they had gazed silently at the lovely picture, the two men descended 
the stairs. 

“For the mother of that child,” Dr. Garfoyle said, speaking in 
a low tone, “there can be but one question possible — ‘will he die 
or will he live ? ’ Neither you nor any other human being has any 
existence for her, Mr. Farnaby, save as your life concerns his. 
Mrs. Goldenour is the child’s nurse; at present she is nothing more. 
If you can accept the position and can await the issue, it is possible — 
mind, I have no authority for what I say — it is possible that her 
memory may return to that which has passed between you, and of 
which she certainly informed me at the time. If you cannot wait, 
you must take upon yourself the responsibility of either speech or 
action. I cannqt consent to undertake the office you require of me. 
Indeed, I am inclined to think that you somewhat misjudge my 
position with regard to Mrs. Goldenour. I have to return to Eng- 
land very shortly; but I have jio doubt that before then the matter 
of life and death will be no longer in the balance.” 

With this the interview between the two men ended. 

Mr. Farnaby sent a bouquet of lovely orchids that evening, and 
on the following day he left Milan ; but he sent a card apprising 
Mrs. Goldenour that he sliould hold himself in readiness to serve 
her in any way, upon receipt of any intimation that he could be of 
use. 

“ This rose smells of smoke, of cigars ; where did it come from. 
Dr. Garfoyle?” Victoria asked, when next they were together. 
Then she heard what had occurred. “ So,” she said, “ Brabazon- 
Farnaby has been here at last ! Oh, yes, I know all about it, and 
just how he treated you, and how he spoke and looked, and how he 
graciously explained his willingness to marry me if Bruce were 
sent to school or handed over to Sir Peregrine, and no doubt I 
might have married him had I not been Bruce’s mother ; but, as it 
is, I am too difficult to love, too impossible to bear with patiently.” 

“ Mrs. Goldenour,” said Dr. Garfoyle gravely, “ I have to inform 
^ou that I leave almost immediately for England ; important busi- 


172 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


ness calls me home, but I have made arrangements which I have to 
communicate to you. I have sent for one who will be a better 
doctor for your child than I could ever be.’’ 

“If you leave me, my boy will die,” she cried. “You cannot 
have the cruelty. All ray hope is in you. Oh, Dr. Garfoyle, stay 
with us, I entreat and implore you ! ” and she fell upon her knees 
and kissed his hands, praying to him for the boon she craved. 
“Dr. Garfoyle, once more I see it all now; his own father tried to 
draw him away from me, to punish me for turning to Brabazon- 
Farnaby. He sees that I am not fit to have the charge of the child, 
and he will take him back. His own father is attracting the boy 
back to himself. You have heard and seen it, you know that it is 
so. It is always that he has heard his father, seen his father ; and 
all this has come upon him and me the moment that I gave my 
word to Mr. Farnaby. But I will not marry him, I will not ; and 
then possibly Francis, my husband, may relent. I will never see 
Brabazon-Farnaby again, and you may tell him so. You may tell 
him to-morrow. Do you hear me ? Only do not leave us ; for I 
know that Bruce will die if you go away; stay, on any terras — do 
you understand ? I will never change again ! I swear to you that 
your will shall be mine, and I your slave, or wife, if only you will 
once more save my son.” 

“ Mrs. Goldenour,” said Dr. Garfoyle, gravely raising her up, “I 
beg you to remember what I have previously told you, that I will 
never take advantage of your maternal anxieties to secure your 
offers of affection. If I may not share your hours of joy and ease — 
and remember that you reserve them for Mr. John Pengelley or 
Mr. Brabazon-Farnaby — believe me, I am still too much your lover 
to be satisfied with a forced permission to dry your tears. Mr. 
Farnaby was your own free choice. You treat him less than well 
in thus abandoning him.” 

“ How can I marry him when they will take Bruce away from 
me if I do, even if he lives? — which, in that case, I don’t believe 
would be the intention of Providence, to judge by present 
evidence.” 

“ Of the intentions of Providence, Mrs. Goldenour, we may be no 
more capable of judging than midges of gauging the motives of 
men.” 


OF FEIENDSHIPS 


173 


‘‘ Mother,” cried the boy from the inner room, “ my father has 
been here again.” 

“ You dreamed it, darling.” 

‘‘ No, for he stood by Dr. Garfoyle; and see, here is the rose that 
he left behind him.” 

“ Dr. Garfoyle,” said Victoria, returning, “ if you must leave us, 
tell me this at least, how am I to keep the child ? You have seen 
for yourself that there is nothing that he desires, nothing that can 
interest him, nothing that holds him here ; we all have our concerns 
in life ; we know the force of love ; we know the wine it pours into 
the cup of life ; even if it’s bitter to the taste there is pungency in 
the full draught. We have thoughts, affections, motives, wishes, 
aims ; money means something to us, less or more, fame means 
something, pleasure has its various interpretations, even sin is worth 
sinning maybe, it gives flavor to insipid moments, savor to dull 
hours ; but for him all these things are not. For him there is no 
interest in this world ; nothing that we have does he desire, nothing 
that we aim at does he prize ; the appeals which are powerful in 
our ears as motives for continuing to be, are words without mean- 
ing to him. No taste of life that he has yet had has given him 
any comprehension of its value. Oh, my friend, speak to me; you 
know that this is true. You too have seen it. Unless some 
meaning or some motive can be brought into his aimless thought of 
our existence here, he will not care to keep his hold on it. Sir, the 
child is dying and you know it, because he sees no use in our poor 
life, he has looked at the threadbare poverty of our mean ways, 
at the cold monotony of our poor lives, and he turns away half 
tired by the disenchantment of his vast instinctive hopes, half 
attracted by the amplitude of some imagined or suggested sphere, 
transcending ours. He is dying because he does not care to live. 
I said to the local doctor this morning, ‘ Tell me now how many 
days do you give him as he is ? ’ and he answered, ‘ Three.’ ” 

The answer which she got from Dr. Garfoyle probably amazed 
Mrs. Goldenour more than any other statement which had ever 
been made to her ; it was emphatic, curt, and unsentimental. 

‘‘He will not die; Shadrach Trupper is coming; he will save his 
life. One of my curates will bring him. I have sent for him. I 
expect them to-morrow. Then I must leave.” 


174 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


“Shadrach Triipper ! ” she exclaimed; ‘‘what has that common 
boy to do with Bruce ? Pye’s vulgar nephew ! What can you 
mean by this? Is this your reponse to my supreme appeal ?” 

“ Emphatically, yes ! Bruce needs another child to teach him 
how to live — a common, healthy, hearty boy; a boy who knows what 
a boy’s interests are ; a boy to speak boy’s language in his ears ; a 
child to wake the child’s heart in him, to know the things that 
children care to work for or to gain. Our interests, no doubt, are 
dross to him, our jokes are serious lessons, our amusements dull 
ceremonies, our friends formidable or unsympathetic folk, our petty 
thoughts are all too large, our simplest words too long and grave. 
Your very yearning that he should live is crushing out his sweet 
young life. Your kisses bring to him the toucli of passionate 
human hunger, jarring upon his innocent disengagement from the 
thraldom of the senses. Forgive me, my friend, but Shadrach 
will find out common things to do and say — indeed he knows no 
other ; and they wdll understand each other, and you must stand 
aside and leave them free to say in childish parlance the things 
which children care to hear and tell. In the place of blue silk 
coverings and white roses you must hope to see sand, or dirt, or 
shells, or lizards. There must be no more white embroidered gar- 
ments, but common indistinguishable clothing. Consider, a man 
or woman stranded all alone among children w'ould be bored to 
death with tedium or annoyance; so a little lonely child among dull 
men and women. What does he know of your maternal love? 
Instinctively he feels that if he is to grow into a man he must 
reach out after those things which shall assist his growth ; and a 
mother’s tender, anxious solicitude retards and weakens where it is 
not subject to the laws which govern his development. There is 
happily in the childish breast a sort of resentment, an instinctive 
revolt against all the demands of passionate feeling to which as 
yet its nature has not become awake; and all the claims of passion 
in a mother’s love where they do not fatally force, instinctively close 
its nature up. Sliadrach is all that is unattractive in your eyes, 
I grant it; Bruce thinks him delightful. Shadrach thinks of his 
dinner-hour before he sees it; Bruce will eat his because Shadrach 
entirely believes in the value of feeding. Shadrach values money 
to purchase toys and sweets; Bruce will learn that toys and sweets 


OF FRIENDSHIPS 


175 


are things he should esteem. You may load liim with them both, 
and he will turn away wearied or indifferent of your offerings, 
because you do not care for them yourself, but show your conde- 
scension to his age in laying them before him. Shadrach is vain of 
his lovely voice, and Bruce will listen when he sings comic lays ; if 
you sang he would dream of angels or fancy that his father sum- 
moned him away. Shadrach will expound third-rate riddles, and 
will make stupid jokes, and Bruce will think them all the cleverest 
things he ever heard ; if you read him stories he would sleep and 
be too weary to attend. Shadrach has both broad sturdy feet, 
planted in stout, cheap boots, firmly on mother earth, and Bruce 
will set his delicate feet in the same prints, to emulate the other’s 
boyish sturdiness of gait. I am no more good, the doctor is no 
more good. You, for the time being, who are all, must be nothing. 
Your love is powerful enough, being a mother’s, to make itself of 
no visible account, that it may conquer in the end. Shadrach will 
come to-morrow. Leave them together. Let Bruce run what you 
think risks ; let him eat and drink what Shadrach shares. Let him 
learn to play Shadrach’s games — upon his bed first of all, afterward 
upon his feet ; and Shadrach will teach him how to live, and will 
show him these things which boyish souls should prize in life.” 

“ Then I may as well marry Mr. Farnaby,” she said, “ and let the 
family put him to school as they wish.” 

“ You will do well to make up your mind whether you mean to 
marry that gentleman or not,” he said gravely. 

‘‘ Do you not see that it rests with you ? ” she said impetuously. 
“ You were too scrupulous to lend my vacillating will the support 
of your stronger judgment. You would not take me at my word. 
You said I should act upon my own deliberate accord; that is not 
my way. I must be held by a will stronger than my own.” 

“ The subsequent consequences of any such conduct on my part 
would be most disastrous,” he replied, ‘‘ even if I were capable of 
playing such a part, which I am not.” 

“ Then you have no more to say to me ; neither have I to you. 
I did but speak as I did because I was angry at your setting aside 
all the power of my love to help my child, with your very masculine 
notion that some careless outside influence could do at once what 
the whole force of my love and devotion of my life had failed to 


176 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


accomplish. Men are all alike at heart, all ready to take all we 
have and all we are — wives, mothers, or sisters, it’s all the same— 
and then to turn away and sa}^, ‘ It is nought.’ ” 

It is everything; your mother’s love is everything, Mrs. Golden- 
our. It alone is great enough to make such a sacrifice. We poor 
men should shrink and quail before such a demand as, speaking as 
a physician, I have just made of you. But I have seen what you 
are capable of ; you, especially, among women. Is it possible that 
I can ever forget ? ” 

“ You are right,” she said, responding to the appeal with a ring 
of triumph in her tone. “ When my husband died I held his poor 
broken body in my arms as long as there was any life left in it. 
After that, can you doubt. Dr. Garfoyle, that I am strong enough 
for all the sacrifices or heroisms that life or death can demand 
of me ? ” 

“I am indeed well assured,” he answered gravely, “that neither 
in life, nor in death, would you fail one who leaned upon your love.” 

“ No, it is you who fail me,” she answered sharply. “ You are 
going away.” 

“I have,” he answered, “news from England which would com- 
pel my return even if it were the case of my own wife or child ; 
but I shall not leave until the day after to-morrow. Good-night.” 


CHAPTER XVI 

A COMMONPLACE CUEE 

Shadrach Trupper duly arrived in charge of the curate who 
had previously decided that when he was a canon he would hear 
the confessions of lovely women by his study fire, as he imagined 
Dr. Garfoyle to have done ; but this young man was not destined 
to enjoy the privilege of Mrs. Goldenour’s society, for his chief 
despatched him to see Florence and Pisa, awaiting his return to 
England on the morning of the third day. 

Shadrach arrived decidedly the worse for the long journey ; 
hearing that he had come, Bruce at once faintly demanded his 
presence. 


A COMMONPLACE CUKE 


177 


Shadrach immediately stretched himself full length upon the 
blue silk coverlet, demolished all its beauty by his usage, took 
more than his share of the bed, and was too sick and cross to 
speak a word ; but Bruce took more interest in the condition of 
the surly child than he had yet taken in anything ; sympathized in 
the administration of remedies by the solicitous Aunt Pye, and 
when Victoria came in she found Shadrach and not Bruce the 
centre of attraction, both to Mrs. Pye and to Bruce himself. She 
had the intruder removed to his aunt’s room and complained of 
his conduct, but was forced to admit that Bruce slept an hour 
longer that night after the excitement of welcoming the other, and 
the arrangement of Shadrach’s morning meal afforded him more 
interest than he had found in any meal of his own. 

‘‘Just what we sent for him for,” said Dr. Garfoyle. “We 
judge of children by ourselves, and it is a disastrous mistake. We 
often misconceive their relations toward each other, as much as 
they misconceive our relations as men and women ; we can as 
little enter into the secrets of their mutual attraction and repulsion 
as they into ours.” 

The next day Shadrach took to knocking boxes to pieces and to 
carpentering in Bruce’s room ; the noise gave every adult person a 
headache in half an hour ; but Bruce happily held nails and screws, 
and lost them in his bed, as long as the other boy required. Shad- 
rach ate and drank three -fourths of all the dainty fare set before 
the invalid ; but then Bruce took the other fourth, which was 
double what he would have taken had the other not been there. 
Shadrach pulled feathers out of the pillows and blew them about 
the room with bellows from the stove ; and when Dr. Garfoyle 
came in to take leave of the boys, Bruce’s soft, weak laughter was 
chiming in with Shadrach’s common cackle. 

“^id this is the day which the local doctor gave him as his 
last,” he said to the mother, whom he found half unhappy in her 
banishment to another room. “He is alf right now; only let this 
go on; do not interfere. Bruce has set his face toward this world 
now, because the other lad has proved to him that it contains com- 
mon, interesting things to do and see.” 

“ You have been a messenger from heaven to us,” she tearfully said. 

“ Oh, no ! Shadrach is the angel, he replied. 

12 


178 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


“And is this how we part?” she asked. “What is taking you 
back to England in such a desperate hurry ? Are they going to 
make you a bishop ? Is any important bishop dead ? And is his 
mitre to fall to your share, or his ring and his crook and his crozier, 
whatever the episcopal impedimenta may be? I am not up in 
these matters. I have had no time nor inclination to look at the 
papers, so that I know nothing. Her Majesty herself might be 
lying in state and it would not have come to my ears.” 

“Your surmise might prove to be the correct one as regards 
myself,” he gravely replied. “My name has been mentioned to 
the Prime Minister, but it would be quite premature to mention 
the subject. The bishopric of Croyland has, as you might have 
heard, fallen vacant, and I have received letters from England 
touching upon the matter, which compel my return. I should, 
however, in any case have left to-day, though I need not trouble 
you with a catalogue of my engagements.” 

“ And while everybody is waiting for you, and they want you to 
make you a bishop, you are here nursing Bruce,” she said ; “ it is 
really quite funny.” 

“ Indeed, I have not yet decided upon my own probable course of 
action ; and in any case my attitude toward yourself, and yours 
toward me, cannot be affected by any such possible change in exter- 
nal conditions.” 

This was more than Victoria was at all sure of privately. She 
well remembered the bishop’s wife whom she had met at the dinner- 
party in Cambridge, where she was first introduced to Dr. Garfoyle. 
She even momentarily recalled her own threat — or was it to be a 
prophecy ? — that she “ would occupy a footstool in the aisle at Great 
St. Mary’s when she should be the wife of a bishop, but not before.” 
It would be one thing to be the wife of so important a person as the 
Bishop of Croyland, and quite another to be only the wife of a 
canon. A canon’s wife has her position spoiled by the juxtaposi- 
tion of minor, or mock canons’ wives. To be sure there were also 
colonial bishops and bishops suffragan ; but in this case such a con- 
sideration was unimportant, since none of these minor dignitaries 
could touch the genuine magnificence of the occupant of a see with 
a seat in the House of Lords. 

This would mean a position for his wife which Victoria at a 


A COMMONPLACE CURE 


179 


glance saw that she could fill with pride and pleasure, and which she 
felt at once that she could iriduhitablj adorn, without descending 
to such adventitious aids as the wearing of a grass-green satin 
gown. Here was an opening which appealed to the imagination. 
Then too there would no longer be any ground left for Sir Pere- 
grine’s very objectionable feet to rest upon ; he could not, with any 
decency, interfere in the management of her boy, if his step-fatlier 
were a bishop. Mr. Brabazon-Farnaby was no doubt a perfectly 
unexceptionable choice, as regards position and means ; he was rich, 
and in a certain set in society he was not unpopular ; but then lie 
was attached to the diplomatic service, and might at any time be 
under the necessity of adjourning to some unpleasant climate; in 
which case she might have to accompany him ; and in this case the 
difficulties with regard to Bruce which had been raised by his 
father’s family would be doubled. Nobody could with decency 
object to a bishop to bring up a boy, even such a boy as Bruce. So 
Victoria played battledore and shuttlecock with the pros and cons, 
even while Dr. Garfoyle innocently stood before her, hat in hand, 
debating the precise form of “ adieu ” required by their very pecu- 
liar position; and quite honestly asserted that the question need 
make “ no difference ” in her attitude of regarding him. The 
important point was perhaps, Victoria thought, “Would it make 
any difference in his mode of regarding her ? Happily the Script- 
ures only stipulated that a bishop should have but one wife ; they 
didn’t go into details as to what the characteristics of the chosen 
one should be.” 

Her vagaries of thought were arrested, however, for Dr. Garfoyle 
calmly observed : 

“I am not even bishop designate yet, remember, Mrs. Goldenour ; 
and I may feel it right to decline the appointment.” 

“ Oh, why ?” she asked in alarmed tones. 

“This is scarcely the moment to discuss such a matter. It 
rests with my own conscience. It is in that inner court that 
judgment must be given, when such a step has to be taken or 
declined. At present I am not in a position to inform you of my 
intentions.” 

Victoria felt annoyed. She knew all about the way in which 
the clergy always accept preferment, as though they were per- 


180 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


forming a penitential act; how they talk about “duty,” “ self- 
sacrilice,” and “ a wider sphere of usefulness,” when in any other 
walk of life a man would say openly that he had got his promotion 
and would be congratulated upon the bigger pay; but she had 
thought the man before her superior to this littleness. 

“ I might as well weigh whether I’d accept it or not, if I was 
offered the post of lady-in-waiting, with a couple of thousand a 
year,” she said shortly. “ Men must keep up these solemn farces, 
and must make believe to themselves, I suppose,” she said inwardly. 
“ I can really see he positively believes that he is still quite doubt- 
ful whether he is going to accept a big bishopric or not. He feels 
himself quite great enough to decline it. That is what does them 
good, to feel themselves equal to some important step, to some 
grand heroic action, which they are not going to perform. They 
wish to get the credit of self-sacrifice, and to enjoy the goods fate 
offers them, both together.” Yet a sense of uneasiness possessed 
her, for her conscience told her that Dr. Garfoyle was perhaps the 
one man in a thousand capable of actually governing his conduct 
by absolutely unworldly motives 

“He positively may decline,” she murmured to herself, “ and if 
he does, what shall I do, where shall I go, what will become of 
me ? Mr. Brabazon-Farnaby is sure to get a foreign appointment. 
I cannot go with him and leave my boy, but they will not dare to 
take Bruce away from me if I marry a bishop.” The man before 
her was a strong man, with a deep and powerful nature ; her very 
dependence upon his strength was an ajipeal to his sense of pro- 
tecting and cherishing care. “What am I to do?” she sadly 
repeated. “ Can you not advise me ? I am not any longer 
engaged to Mr. Brabazon-Farnaby. I know that he has been here, 
that he has treated you as though you were Bruce’s paid tutor, or 
at best my grandfather, about a hundred years old ; any other 
man but yourself would have called it insolent. Have you noth- 
ing left to say to me ? ” 

“ All that I had to say to you, Mrs. Goldenour, I said, if you 
remember it, in the olive-wood by the villa at Nice. Since then 
circumstances have changed. This is neither the time nor the 
place for explanations.” 

“ Will you give me three months again, and, if I am constant 


A COMMONPLACE CURE 


181 


this time, will you forgive the way in which I have treated you? ” 
she cried imploringly. 

Dr. Garfoyle made no answer, for at that instant Bruce’s voice 
was heard calling from his bed : 

“ Is that Dr. Garfoyle going away ? I do not want Dr. Gar- 
foyle to go away.” 

“Then shall we go back to England,” said Victoria, “as soon as 
you can move and see him there again ? ” 

“Oh, yes, mother, may we? and go and live in St. Amwell’s 
Vicarage, me and Shadrach and all together ? ” Victoria thought 
it was not exactly in that humble locality that she proposed to 
live, for her part. “ And,” continued the boy, “ may I go to the 
Higher Grade School, and both of us play cricket in the boys’ 
playing-field near the house? We have been making lots of 
plans ; at least, I have been making them, and Shadrach has been 
saying, ‘Rather’ — haven’t you, Shadrach? Ah, Dr. Garfoyle is 
really gone ! What a pity ; isn’t it, Shadrach ? ” 

Shadrach shifted from one foot to the other, and muttered an 
unintelligible reply. He stood somewhat in awe of Dr. Garfoyle, 
and more so of Bruce’s fine lady mother. His own notion of a 
mother was naturally of a homely, substantial person, like Mrs. 
Trupper or his Aunt Pye. A person who could make a pudding ; 
who administered scrubbings when a boy required it ; who was 
even prepared to clean his boots upon occasion, so much did she 
value his Sabbatical appearance ; a person who could scold a good 
deal, but who might nevertheless be absolutely relied upon to 
prefer her son’s good to her own, whatever might happen. And 
Bruce’s fine lad}^ mother did not come up to Shadrach’s standard 
in any one direction ; whenever she spoke to him, he only muttered 
and looked shame-faced ; whenever she entered the room, he wished 
with all his heart that he were out of it.' 

“ We are going to wear each other’s clothes, and we are going 
to be helped first in turns, Mrs. Pye says.” If Mrs. Pye had said 
it, Victoria privately noted that Mrs. P^^e should suffer for it. 
“And when I get well,” the child continued, “we are both going 
into the big bath in the corridor together.” 

His sweet eyes fairly danced with joy at this invigorating pros- 
pect, and a pretty color tinted his pale cheeks with a soft rose-pink. 


182 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


But his mother’s heart sank within her ; tliis was Dr. Garfoyle’s 
notion of a cure, and she did not dare to interfere, lest, if she took 
her own way, she might have cause to repent it. But in her annoy- 
ance and disgust she wrote to Dr. Garfoyle a few days later, con- 
fessing that his prescription was answering wonderfully, that her 
boy was rapidly recovering, but weakly lamenting that Mrs. Pye 
could not be withheld from profiting by the situation. 

“One. would think,” she said, “that Pye felt she had kindly con- 
sented to be an aunt solely that Bruce might have the benefit of 
her vulgar little nephew for his companion. She yearns to make 
me sensible of the obligation. I am confident she would be quite 
capable of charging so much per hour for the benefit of his com- 
panionship, and my darling throws himself into it so eagerly. 
Is it not strange that, refined as he is, he should not feel the 
difference which, after all, exists between himself and Shadrach 
Trupper?” 

To which Dr. Garfoyle duly responded : 

“ Why does he not feel it ? Because it does not exist ; because 
the child’s vision is too divinely pure for our poor false distinctions ; 
his noble spirit too un warped by our pitiful conventions. Be- 
lieve me, Mrs. Goldenour, to live with children such as yours, 
should be to see with their candid eyes, to trust with their 
unspoiled hearts. It is a privilege for anyone — than which there 
can be none greater — to see with the vision of the angels which are 
in heaven. We try to teach them our poor ways when, if only we 
would learn of them, they would lead us straight by easy pathwaj’s 
to the wisest judgments ever uttered.” 

In the course of affairs it chanced that Mr. Brabazon-Farnaby’s 
chief and patron. Lord Debutts, not having achieved the success 
expected from him in the last of his numerous appointments, was 
at this precise epoch transferred, at the suggestion of the permanent 
under-secretary for Foreign Affairs, from the Diplomatic to the 
Foreign Office. And Mr. Brabazon-Farnaby, who felt that his 
chief’s recent unpopularity was due mainly to his own witlidrawal, 
consented to be again nominated for active employment. Con- 
stantinople was to be the new scene of his onerous duties ; and as 
Lord Debutts had but recently recovered from a serious illness, 


A COMMONPLACE CURE 


183 


upon Mr. Brabazon-Farnaby devolved much responsibility which 
he might otherwise have shirked. 

As Mrs. Goldenour was passing through Paris on her return 
journey to England, Mr. Farnaby waited upon her himself at the 
Grand Hotel. He pressed his suit with dignity and determina- 
tion ; but, although no doubt his manners were well calculated to 
make a favorable impression upon the Sultan, they failed to attract 
the inconstant Victoria. Consistent only in her inconstancy, she 
had now quite made up her mind that she did not love any man 
well enough, be he bishop, diplomat, or country gentleman, to 
relinquish the companionship of her son for his. And, as to 
Constantinople Bruce would certainly not be permitted to remove, 
to Constantinople she herself had not the slightest intention of 
going, however brilliant might be the inducements of the position 
there offered for her acceptance. Indeed, she had further decided 
that, once for all, she preferred a bishop’s palace in England to an 
official residence at the Sultan’s court. So she turned a deaf ear to 
all Mr. Farnaby’s well-expressed representations, and resolutely dis- 
missed him, to expedite his departure in solitary state for his new 
office. 

“ You think you have cause to complain of my conduct? So do 
I. To what do I attribute the change in my attitude toward your- 
self? To sheer, downright laziness, Mr. Farnabj^ You offer me a 
striking situation, and I thank you for the compliment implied ; 
but I am indifferent, lazy, aggravating, disinclined. Find some- 
body else, Mr. Farnaby, and forgive me on your wedding-day. I 
am a thing of the moment, as you know, and this'is not the moment. 
Let us part with mutual comprehension. Adieu.” 

She held out her hand, but he refused to see it, and warmed by 
anger went his way. 

There are perhaps few men and women who do not gain, like 
pills, from being silver-coated ; the coating may be of youth or 
beauty, the beauty of mind or body, or even of soul. John Pen- 
gelley had attracted Mrs. Goldenour probably by the force of his 
young and vigorous manhood ; Brabazon-Farnaby had held her 
for a short time by subtle personal perfections of manner and pres- 
ence peculiar to himself. He satisfied expectations of the external 
sort. He was not a man that a woman need ever fear to blush for 


184 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


in society ; Dr. Garfoyle had won her gratitude and devotion by 
his love of her child rather than of herself, but this sentiment, like 
the rest, would probably have been powerless to hold her, uncom- 
bined with his recommendations of fortune and position. As a 
mere man he needed something to complete him in her eyes. She 
found it in the prospects of a palace, lawn sleeves, an apron, and 
several thousands a year. 


CHAPTER XVII 

A DOUBLE CEREMONY 

On the second Tuesday in the month of July, a ceremony took 
place in Westminster Abbey which attracted a good many specta- 
tors, even at that fashionable time of year. This was the conse- 
cration of Dr. Garfoyle, and of two other inferior bishops, colonials. 
It had already been announced in the papers about two months 
before, that the Queen had been pleased to approve the appoint- 
ment of Dr. Terence Garfoyle — here followed a complete list of his 
dignities— to the see of Croyland, vacant by the demise of the late 
bishop. The world, or rather that fragment of it represented by 
the church people who cared to stop to peruse the lengthy para- 
graph, had been duly instructed in all that Dr. Garfoyle had done 
scholastically, academically, and clerically, since he was fifteen years 
of age. Dr. Garfoyle had also for his part been pretty plainly 
informed as to what was expected of him sociall}^, politically, and 
ecclesiastically, when he entered upon his new sphere. But the 
real fact which interested the instructed minority in the Abbey on 
this summer morning had not been overlooked by the society 
papers, and during the ordination service itself, it was whispered 
from mouth to mouth among the select portion of the vast congre- 
gation, that the newly made bishop was going to be married that 
afternoon. This, it need not be said, was Victoria’s own arrange- 
ment. Dr. Garfoyle had pleaded in vain for an absolutely private 
and unostentatious ceremony at eight o’clock in the morning of any 
other day. But Victoria liked her own way, and she took it of 
course by prescriptive right on such an occasion as this. What she 


A DOUBLE CEREMONY 


185 


would have liked would have been a sort of double ceremony. She 
would have enjoyed having the archbishop proceed from one ser- 
vice straight to the other, without so much as stepping from liis 
prominent position for a second. She felt quite capable personally 
of gracefully stepping out of the densely packed ranks of the spec- 
tators, a beautiful and blushing bride, with one or two bridesmaids 
and Bruce as a page ; she would not have more attendants, because 
it would not be “ the thing ” for a widow. She would have expected 
all the bishops, or other clergy present, to remain to assist in unit- 
ing her to their newly ordained brother, while ‘‘The Voice that 
Breathed o’er Eden ” was being sung by the choir, and the widowed 
bride’s beautiful little son held up the train of his mother’s pearl- 
gray satin. 

But in all these flights of fancy she was doomed to disappoint- 
ment. 

Dr. Garfoyle inaugurated his married life by a compromise. A 
couple of hours after the ordination service was concluded, a per- 
fectly private ceremony, which took place at St. Margaret’s in the 
Abbey Yard, united him to Mrs. Goldenour. 

Victoria, leading her boy by the hand, and attended only by the 
Peregrine Goldenours and Mrs. Bratton-Flerning, advanced up the 
aisle, and took her stand by the newly made bishop, without the 
slightest appearance of doing anything of special consequence. To 
her, this sequestered service had, she thankfully recognized, 
nothing in common with the bright bridal which imagination 
recalled to her memory in Sydney. This was nothing but a 
religious ritual ; what else could it be if you married a bishop ? 
That was an- adjunct to a life that was meant to be one of laughter ; 
the introduction to a joyful participation in a feast of love. She 
had formed one of the vast congregation at the earlier service in 
the Abbey, and, creature of the moment as she was, her emotional 
nature had then been deeply stirred ; her' aesthetic taste had been 
gratified by the impressiveness of the ceremony, and she would 
fain have had her special part in it. Had this been permitted, all 
life would have been temporarily rounded by a psalm for her ; her 
responsive soul might have been upborne on the wings of music 
and intercession, until she floated in imagination heavenward by 
the side of the saintly man whom she espoused — pretty much, per- 


186 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


haps^ like a butterfly sporting and soaring a dozen yards or so 
skyward, climatic conditions being favorable. In that case his 
consecration to his solemn calling might have been imitated, at 
a vast distance no doubt, by her self-dedication to his service ; 
almost as some conventual bride might dedicate her life to her 
superior calling, might Victoria Goldenour have devoted herself to 
this servant of the Church. But by the time that all the crowds, 
curious and otherwise, had dispersed, while the clergy had gone to 
lunch at the Bounty Office ; when the organist and the choir had 
departed to their homes, and the echoes of music were quite dead 
in the vacant amplitudes of the now silent Abbey, all Victoria’s 
warmth of feeling had died down. 

With thoughts dropping down to her luncheon, for she was very 
hungry, and the morning service had been extraordinarily pro- 
longed, with considerations of unconfessed debts, and with doubts 
of many things, she stood before the altar in St. Margaret’s. 
Happily the pecuniary aspect of the question could not be con- 
sidered serious, since she was marrying a bishop, whose income, 
public and private together, amounted to something like eight 
thousand a year ; but Victoria had suspicions as to her new hus- 
band’s views on the personal appropriation of his ecclesiastical 
income. Indeed, she expected some trouble altogether with his 
“views” on several matters ; but she meant to proceed carefully in 
the initiation of her own rdle of conduct as his wife. She meant 
to be firm, yet discreet ; determined, yet always adorable. She 
proposed to influence him insensibly, until he dropped those pecu- 
liar ways of looking at things. Conduct which had been permis- 
sible in a bachelor divine must now distinctly be laid aside. She 
was not marrying the man as he was ; but the bishop as she meant 
him to be. 

But as the service proceeded, when they got to the hymn, 
“ Oh, Perfect Love,” a great favorite by the way of the bishop’s, 
Victoria felt inwardly self-accused and reproved ; for the poverty 
of her emotional progression, the attitude of her thoughts, was 
beneath the occasion. She was not thinking suitably. What a 
mercy the man by her side could not know it ! She gave herself 
a mental heave-up, jumped, so to speak, or played at flying ; nay, 
for she meant well, she even prayed to fly ; and for a few seconds — 


A DOUBLE CEREMONY 


187 


while the hymn lasted — she saw herself and the bishop together, 
he in full canonicals and she in a soft gray satin of the color of an 
innocent dove’s sweet wing, hand in hand, floating on some luminous 
cloud, midway between earth and heaven ; and from their outspread 
hands blaiid benedictions descended upon the diocese of Croyland, 
with the marvellous impartiality of the natural gifts of heaven ; 
conditioned, shall we confess it, in the form of soup for showers, 
shillings for sunshine, and invitations to the palace for ah entrance 
upon the joys of Paradise ! 

No small part of the benefit indeed which Victoria proposed to 
confer upon her bishop took the shape of deliverance from his 
besetting sin of eccentricity ; and she genuinely meant it too, as 
a testimony of her real regard for the man and her affectionate 
interest in him. Love him as she had loved lier first young hus- 
band, of course she did not, and he did not expect it of her ; but 
in his generosity of spirit Dr. Garfoyle had never been at the 
pains to investigate how much the importance of his new position 
had had to do with the fixity of purpose finally displayed by her, 
in waiting from April to July for the double event of this impor- 
tant day. 

The Peregrine Goldenours had breathed no word of taking 
Bruce out of his mother’s sole and exclusive charge, from the 
moment that they learned that her choice of a husband had fallen 
upon so eminent an ecclesiastic as Dr. Terence Garfoyle. Together 
with Mrs. Bratton-Fleming, Mrs. Gruter, and Helen Keltridge, they 
sat close beside her during the marriage service, feeling that at last 
they had even quite forgiven her for having ever married their 
family’s younger son. “Poor Frank’s foolish wddow had done 
better than might have been expected !” Lady Peregrine even 
hazarded the opinion that “Poor Frank would be quite pleased if 
it was really true, as people said nowadays, that ‘ they ’ knew all 
about everything.” But her husband snubbed her for being 
“ superstitious,” so she spent the rest of the time in vainly trying 
to find the marriage service in a stray prayer-book, and said no 
more till the ceremony was .concluded. 

In the disentanglement of motives which happily is never 
attempted in society, it might well have been found that the final 
determining cause of Victoria’s rejection of the man of fashion, and 


188 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


acceptance of the man of the Church, lay in that fateful letter of 
the Goldenour family, threatening to take her boy away from her, 
which sent her in such hot haste to Milan, there to see her darling 
so nearly lose his life on the steps of the Duomo. 

‘‘ Who would have thought it ? ” Mrs. Bratton-Fleming asked 
her brother. Sir Peregrine, when the marriage was a fact accom- 
plished, and they were leaving the church. 

“ I always confidently predicted that she would turn out better 
than you expected,” grufily replied Sir Peregrine. He suffered 
from chronic bronchitis, and it was apt to be mistaken for 
temper. 

‘‘ It was you. Peregrine, who decided to remove the boy from 
her care,” retorted Mrs. Bratton-Fleming. 

‘‘ He made up his mind about it directly Sir Victor Bruce died, and 
left Bruce his heir-prospective,” said Lady Peregrine. ‘‘ You see, 
that made the boy’s bringing up of so veiy much more importance. 
So long as we all supposed he would have to earn his living, of 
course it did well enough for Victoria to bring him up in lodgings, 
living anyhow. He would probably have had to go to the Colonies 
as soon as he grew up, and it was of no use to worry about him, 
but of course, as his grandfather’s heir, all that would have been 
highly unsuitable. Now, nothing could be nicer. Having bo3^s of 
my own, of course I entered into it deeply, and it is such a relief. 
You see, we were always expecting the undesirable man Victoria 
was sure to meet abroad, and in point of fact she did meet him ; 
only he was averted by Bruce’s accident, and assigned a post at 
Constantinople in the Diplomatic Corps. So he happily" went off, 
and this very different affair came on instead.” 

The party having been handsomely entertained at a late luncheon 
by Sir Peregrine and Lady Goldenour at their house in town, it 
was proposed during the course of the afternoon to drive down to 
Lambeth. The archbishop, having one of his usual receptions, 
had invited the new bishop to appear thereat with his bride and 
his friends. The bride and bridegroom naturally occupied the 
foremost carriage; Sir Peregrine, his wife, and Mrs. Bratton- 
Fleming came next in the family landau, while in a hired hum- 
bly followed at a distance Mrs. Gruter and her adopted daughter, 
Mrs. Keltridge. As special friends of Dr. Garfoyle’s, these ladies 


A DOUBLE CEREMONY 


189 


had been invited to come up from Cambridge for the day to wit- 
ness the double ceremony. The old professor was worse than 
usual, and Mrs. Gruter, who disliked weddings at the best of times, 
was in no placid mood on this auspicious afternoon. 

“Lady Peregrine has already been laying herself out for an 
invitation to the palace,” she said, as they jogged along. “ Mrs. 
Garfoyle will certainly have to repay them all the ‘allowances’ 
they have doled out to her hitherto, if ever she means to be rid of 
them now. The bishop had better have written them all checks 
on the top of his hat in the robing-room at the Abbey if he wished 
to be free of their claims.” 

As an old friend of Dr. Garfoyle’s, Mrs. Gruter had been privi- 
leged to have a favorable introduction to the relatives of the bride. 
That she had not been agreeably impressed by them, might be 
gathered from these and other comments as they drove along, far 
in the rear of the bridal party, on their way down to Lambeth. 

“Lady Peregrine’s reasoning was funny,” said Helen Keltridge. 
“ How carefully she explained to you, mother, that, having boys 
of her own of just the same age as Bruce, she proposed to deprive 
Victoria of her son, because she was so fond of her own that she 
thoroughly entered into a mother’s feelings.” 

“ Oh, any logic, like any manners, will do in a family ! ” said Mrs. 
Gruter. “ They will stick to her now like limpets, from what I 
have seen of them, and about next Christmas they will begin to 
borrow money of her : not a doubt about it. For my part, I only 
wish that our friend, the bishop, had been wise enough to accept 
the bishopric and to reject the bride. Oh, yes ; I know you don’t 
agree with me, Helen. You are unnaturally and inconsistently 
prejudiced in her favor. Why, I cannot conceive ; for you are two 
of the most opposite natures possible. But she has somehow 
bewitched you. She has cast her spells upon you. Upon you and 
the bishop both ; I suppose because you have much in common with 
him practically, therefore you see her in the same glorified light that 
he does. But, as for me, I look at her with a common composite 
candle, and I see a young woman at once far too pretty and too fast 
to make any middle-aged man, be he brewer or bishop, decently 
happy. When once she has got tired of him, which will happen 
quite as soon as might be expected, he will be lucky if she does not 


190 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


make liis life a burden to him. Indeed, were he not a bishop, he 
would probably, under her control, advance through the Court of 
Bankruptcy to the Divorce Court. It would be a novel sensation to 
see a bishop there ; but perhaps the powers that be may preserve a 
saintly ecclesiastic from such an undesirable goal. There might 
even be special legal difficulties, for all that I know to the 
contrary.” 

“ Don’t, dear friend ! ” pleaded Helen. “ I assure you, Victoria 
is of a very unusual character. There are heights and depths in her 
nature rarely to be met with even in tlie most heroic women. There 
are few acts of devotion of which I privately do not believe her 
capable. She is as capable of marked and original action in one 
direction as in another. The women who have gone out on forlorn 
philanthropic hopes, who have died nursing natives or lepers, who 
have been pioneers in unpopular paths of progress, have all been 
made, I am convinced, of the same stuff as Victoria Goldenour — I 
ought to have said Garfoyle ! ” 

“ Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Gruter, quite unmoved by what she heard. 
“ I know all about the very good and very bad business. 

“ When she was good she was very, very good, 

And when she was bad, she was horrid. 

That is an elementary axiom in character-reading ; but Victoria 
Garfoyle possesses, over and above these normal distinctions, a quite 
special unreliability which is all her own — the result probably of 
definite psychological or possibly physical conditions, there’s no say- 
ing which, and I hate being driven into professional corners.” 

‘‘You expect her to be very bad, mother, because she may 
undoubtedly be capable of turpitude ; I expect her to be very 
good. But it is for the same reason that we both recognize that 
the one thing she will not be is commonplace and colorless ; as to 
that we are both agreed.” 

“She is badly mixed,” said Mrs. Gruter; “she is too entirely 
feminine.” 

“ And what, pray, are you and I ? ” questioned Mrs. Keltridge in 
surprise. 

“ Oh, you and I are better compounded, we have qualifications of 
either sort or sex ; we have sterner characteristics to weight or 


A DOUBLE CEREMONY 


191 


stifle our emotions ; we can look upon any man as a friend or an 
acquaintance, while to women of her disposition every man they 
encounter is a possible lover. She has the feminine instinct so 
absolutely developed that she can never hold it in abeyance. 
There are, conversely, plenty of men like her in their way, and a 
vast amount of mischief they manage to make in the world, as 
we’ve all heard till we’re sick of the subject. What is wanted is a 
suitable mixture in all human beings of either sort. Happily for 
our friend here, she has been moved to marry the bishop by the only 
other passion of her nature which possesses power over her, namely^ 
the maternal. She has wedded a step-father for her boy. The 
conflict between the two passions will always tear her to pieces ; 
and, as things now are, the victory will remain, if I am to prophesy, 
always with the maternal, so long as she is the wife of Bishop Gar- 
foyle ; but of one passion or the other she will ever be the sport.” 

“ The world’s work would never get done without people with 
passions, mother.” 

‘‘Nor its play either, my dear, I grant you; and it would be 
deadly dull ; that I am prepared to admit.” 

“ So let us welcome Victoria Garfoyle, with all the chances that 
she introduces into the drama of life.” 

“ By all means, only unfortunately our venerable friend’s heart 
is the dice-box, Helen ; and, unless I am very much mistaken, his 
wife will rattle it so vigorously as half to shake the life out of his 
finer organization. It may take him to heaven the quicker, there’s 
always that consideration and consolation ! But here we are. Now 
for the common congratulations. Stay by me, Helen, and let us 
get away early. We must catch the eight o’clock train back to 
Cambridge. I can’t imagine why I came here at all.” 

Dr. Garfoyle’s own more equably balanced nature maintained an 
attitude which his bride’s was never competent to touch even in 
hours of highest exaltation ; on this day he realized, as he had 
never done before, that man was made for love, and that the 
measure of the force of his affections registered the capacity of his 
power for good or evil in the world. 

Wide as were the ordinary limits of his remarkable personality 
as compared with those of ordinary men, on this day they were 
trampled down by the inrush of exalted, emotional experience. 


192 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


His fine nature was endowed with marvellous accessions of power, 
hitherto held in unconscious reserve ; inner springs of feeling, no 
longer necessarily restrained, welled forth to fertilize and bless all 
who came within his influence ; and these hours of exalted com- 
munion with the purest and most spiritualized conceptions of love 
as an emanation from the Divine, transfigured the benign counte- 
nance of this man of simple habits and of singular purity of nature 
with the radiance of a spiritual splendor easily recognizable by 
those who saw him in the light of heaven in which he stood. 

No, certainly the new bishop was not hungry, although his 
bride was, or professed to be so, when they joined the large party 
who were imbibing tea and coffee and eating ices at Lambeth. 
Such of the guests as recognized the bishop crowded round them with 
appropriate congratulations. It Jiad been a perfectly recognized 
thing that the marriage was to be to a certain extent overlooked, 
as being a ceremony of secondary importance to the consecration 
in the Abbey ; moreover, a widow is not supposed to care for too 
much fuss about her second nuptials ; but Mrs. Garfoyle was too 
beautiful to be suppressed and taken for granted, as a plainer 
woman might have been, and all those within reach of her smiles 
were solicitous to say the right thing to such a very attractive 
personage. 

The new bishop and his bride were to betake themselves forth- 
with to the diocese. He had no tolerance for the thought of a 
“ honeymoon.” He was eager to begin his new duties, and Victoria 
acquiesced easily enough. She was equally anxious to furnish her 
new and stately home. She had had enough of wandering about, 
unframed by adventitious circumstance. She valued the setting of 
wealth and position. His thoughts were full of the hope to con- 
vert convictions enthusiastically entertained upon what he held 
to be vital questions, into conduct consistent if unconventional ; 
her imagination was quickened by the intention of representing 
artistically correct ideas, by faultless decorations and unimpeach- 
able upholstery in the palace at Croyland. He promised himself 
that he would make the bishop’s palace the centre of the cultivated, 
spiritual life of the diocese ; he desired it to be as a focus where 
men of every variety and shade of opinion in religious matters, as 
well as in social and political views, should find it possible to meet, 


A DOUBLE CEREMONY 


193 


silencing their differences by the voice of Christian charity. There, 
their disputes were to he arranged by their spiritual father’s efforts ; 
their anxieties lightened, their loads of care lifted or at least shared ; 
their very doubts touched by some Ithuriel spear of hope and con- 
verted into prophecies of some form of larger faith. 

Mrs. Garfoyle meant that her parties should be the best yet seen 
in the county, where the women might learn of the bishop’s wife 
how to dress, while she held her social court ; and yet — for she 
remembered her recent past — where even the poorest curate’s wife 
should not be neglected, should not find herself ousted from the 
winter’s fire, coldl}^ crushed if she kept the company waiting while 
she put her children to bed before she started, and so kept the 
company ten minutes waiting, or deliberately dismissed if the 
driver of her hired fly chanced to linger unduly over his prolonged 
libations. 

“We will be very kind,” she said to her husband, and he beamed 
in delight upon her when the gentle words caressed his ears. 
“ Very kind,” and she added to herself, for she was not sure how 
far his sympathies would accompany the sentiment, “and very 
popular. I hate aristocratic impertinence, there is none like it. I 
have suffered from it enough in my obscure days of poverty. I 
mean to be very encouraging, Terence,” she added aloud ; and he 
paused to reflect how her lips glorified the old Irish name by which 
he could not remember ever to have heard her address him before. 
Meanwhile, she had silently finished the sentence in words not 
meant to appeal to his ears. “But I shall gratify all my tastes, 
because they are so good, so irreproachable, because they rise so far 
above the vulgar level. Religion is art, and art is religion, and I 
mean to have the best of both. And scienceds religion, and philan- 
thropy is religion, and agreeable travel to investigate foreign faiths 
is religion, and laying foundation stones and eating cold collations 
is religion, and indeed almost anything is religion nowadays. I’ve 
learned all about that ; so to be unaffectedly artistic in taste, and 
dramatic in disposition, is to be sincerely pious. The more deli- 
cious the emotion, the more praiseworthy its cultivation. There 
are many good gifts, purchasable by pounds sterling, to which a 
higher source is often attributed. When I was poor I was deeply 
in debt ; it was wrong, perhaps, but was I to blame ? Not I, for 
13 


194 


THE HUSBAND OP ONE WIFE 


salvation from that sin as from most others is an expensive luxury 
largely reserved by the rich for themselves ; now that I am one of 
them, I too shall cease from sinning vulgarly. Sin is low, there 
is no doubt about it, and it is largely a matter of personal position.”' 

The day was a hot one even for late July, and the bishop and his 
bride thankfully found themselves at last alone together in a Pull- 
man car, monotonously moving onward through the falling shades 
of night, toward their distant home ; whither Bruce in the care of 
Mrs. Pye had already preceded them. They were sitting side by 
side, his arms were around her, and his aspect one of entire beati- 
tude. 

“ Oh, Terence,” she said; “ I am so happy that I am all composed 
and compounded of good resolutions. How long do you suppose it 
will take to evaporate them ? It is not because I am rich, you 
know; poor Brabazon-Farnaby could have made me that, if that 
had been all that I cared for. But I do like to feel good too ; it is 
nice, and your goodness is so great that it comes off upon me ! 
Well ! and why not ? If sin is infectious — which no one, I take it, 
will presume to deny — why should not you and other saints have 
the power of actually transmitting the virtue by which you are 
personally possessed ? ” 

“ The good gifts which you have given me are so many and so 
greatl}’^ beyond what you can know or comprehend, my sweet 
wife,” was the answer, ‘‘ that all that I have, or that I may be, I 
pray to pour forth for j’^our benefit. Are you not my spring ? 
Have you not lit up ray life with new hope? From what disci- 
plines of soul have you not freed me? From what darkness have 
you not led me forth into the air of a divinely renewed existence ? ” 

Victoria paled before these ardent words. 

‘‘Yes, dear,” she said uneasily; “it is nice of you to feel that; 
but forgive ray interrupting you — did you remember to ask your 
chaplain to measure the drawing-room carpet forme?” 

The bishop smiled benignly, as one might smile upon an innocent 
child ; recalled his thoughts, evidently by an effort, from their 
wider range, bent his fine head in a moment’s consideration, and 
then said : 

“ Yes, my love, I did remember your commission. I gave him a 
tape-measure, and he found that the larger room measured thirty- 


A DOUBLE CEREMONY 


195 


five by thirty feet. It will be a very good place for social gather- 
ings for people of all classes.” 

“ Of all opinions, you mean,” she said, laughing rather unsteadily. 
“ For my part I don’t care what their opinions are, so long as their feet 
are correctly shod, and they don’t spoil my gorgeous new carpet.” 
But, even while she spoke, the smile died away from her sweet 
face, and he saw tlie tears gathering in her lovely eyes. Imme- 
diately he became aware that this tale of a carpet had only been 
intended as a covering for some deeper thought ; and, before he 
could decide what to select as the cause of sorrow, she had flung 
her head down on his shoulder and she was weeping bitterly. 

“ I cannot help thinking of dear Frank,” she sobbed. “And of 
the day on which we were married. Oh, you cannot expect it to be 
like that ! We were both so happy, both so young, and everything 
in life was before us. Oh, I wish I had died when he did ! Oh, 
Frank, Frank, take me back to you ! He is always calling the boy, 
but he never comes near me! He has quite given me up! He 
knew I should marry again; but he might know, if he knows any- 
thing, and if life after death is no deception, that I have done my 
best for tlie boy, his boy, and have never forgotten that I was his 
mother when I made any decision in life.” 

“I know, my darling, I know,” he said, with rare self-abnega- 
tion, as he folded her closely in his arms; “and henceforth you 
have not only Bruce to console you, but you will allow me to 
devote all that I am and that I have to protect and console you.” 

“It is all so sad,” she wept. “ It is such an awful memory ! I 
never go in a train without seeing it all.” 

“ There are memories so precious, even while so tragic, that we 
would not be without them, my child. When we count the crush- 
ing losses of life we reckon up its gains,” he said tenderly ; but 
with her the emotional pendulum had changed tears into smiles 
already, and she relieved the tension of feeling b}^ easy chatter. 

“It is such a funny honeymoon,” she said, smiling through her 
tears, “ to be journeying with a bishop to a palace ! Frank and I 
went on the cars up the country as far as they went at all, and 
there we just took possession of a friend’s log-built house. It was 
nearly empty of things ; and we picked up wood and lighted a 
fire, and we boiled our own coffee from a bottle of essence we took 


196 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


with US from the stores ; and I had some cakes in my bag, and 
we got some eggs from a neighboring settler, and we sort of pic- 
nicked out for four days. Then we went back to the town, and I 
wore my new things, and I dazzled even our smartest society in 
Sydney.” 

“ I like you to tell me all about it,” he said, while he stroked 
her hair with fingers whose every touch was a caress. “ I have 
never been able to understand that a man or woman should prefer 
to hear that no one has been loved before they were loved them- 
selves. One must at any rate have been in love with love itself 
before one can truly love any human being ; and further, a man or 
woman gains greatly by all that has broken up, enriched, and cul- 
tivated the nature of the other before their own turn came. The 
gain of one must be the gain of both, so do not hesitate to speak 
to me of your past, my beloved.” But she was silent, like a bird 
whose song might not come at call. “And now,” he said, “you 
have passed to my care, and you will teach me how to show my 
gratitude to you, my darling ; how to do and be that which you 
wish. You will have more things to teach me probably than if I 
were a younger man. You may have to bear with much in me ; 
I have habits acquired in years of solitude which I sometimes fear 
may drop from me less quickly than I should desire, but I entreat 
you to remember that these things will be but tricks of manner or 
effects of circumstance. In heart and in soul I am yours, abso- 
lutely and unreservedly yours. I adore you! I worship you, my 
beloved ! It is no mere figure of speech.” 

“ And I,” she said, smiling archlj^, and quite forgetting her tears, 
while she drew herself up and laid her little hands on his shoul- 
ders, “ what in return shall I do for you ? I will teach you to 
enjoy your life, to taste.it for its own sake, as food agreeable to 
the palate, not as daily bread to be digested on the road to heaven 
to strengthen you to get there. Come now, I will talk profession- 
ally, as becomes the bishop’s wife ; I will teach you to give praise 
for the blessings of this life, m3^self among the rest.” 

“ Yourself first and foremost,” he responded ; being, though a 
bishop, very much in love. 

“ Ah, my dear lord,” she said quickly, “ already you have ad- 
mitted the world and the flesh when you took me into your arms. 


A DOUBLE CEREMONY 


197 


Who and what will follow ? Answer me that. He generally comes 
first, it is true, but I may yet be the means of providing the intro- 
duction.” 

‘‘ Do not jest on such a theme, my darling,” he remonstrated. 
“ Lurking beneath my love of you I find no fleshly devil. I am 
no anchorite to be scared like my predecessor, St. Guthlac, in the 
Abbey of Croyland. Hidden in my love for, you I find this secret 
only, that my love lives and derives its meaning from the immortal 
love whence issue all life and all being. In my love to you I 
become conscious of a wider universe, in which my largest actions 
are but as the efforts of insects to us invisible. In it I perceive 
purposes and allegiances which govern us securely, and which will 
unite our separate lives in one, while they hold us to the soul and 
centre of all created things. In it I realize the pressure and inspira- 
tion of the divine love element which is about us all. This con- 
sciousness surel}^, and not the vain dread of any lurking presence 
of evil, is the secret of the highest achievement and benediction 
alike in love and in life. All that you can teach me of love, teach 
me fearlessly, my beloved wife, and I shall bless you, while I shall 
rejoice to learn even the least and most apparently trivial lessons 
from your sweet lips ; and I accept them all as fragments of infinite 
truths, vaster than the intellect of sage can singly fathom or grasp, 
yet which are hidden in the nature of the most innocent child, and 
which spring up spontaneously in the loving heart of the purest 
and tenderest woman.” 

Victoria could not make much of all this, so she changed the 
subject ; but she felt it was quite the right wa}^ in which a bishop 
ought to make love, if he had to do it at all. There was a superior 
flavor about it which she liked ; it was pleasant and dignified, and 
she really did honestly care for him very much indeed, so no doubt 
it would be all right. 


198 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


CHAPTER XVIII 

TEACH ME FEARLESSLY 

The custom of ventilating every possible grievance in the columns 
of the daily press has taught everybody of late years to compre- 
hend the financial sorrows of newly created Church dignitaries, 
when, after hopefully ascending to the bench of bishops, they find 
themselves seated there with empty wind-bags for full pockets. 
They have had to reward everybody for their elevation, from im- 
portant personages, historic officers, crown officers, law officers, and 
what not, down to clerks, choristers, servants, bedesmen, and alms- 
women ; all have levied their tax upon the new bishop’s good 
fortune. If added to all this the sanguine ecclesiastic, upon the 
very day of his consecration, takes to himself a young and expen- 
sive wife, what can he expect but pecuniary problems, especially" 
if the bride be one who brings with her for her marriage portion a 
mighty sheaf of unpaid bills to be met by a single life annuity of 
fifty pounds a year ? 

It may readily be believed that by the time the said wife had 
had two large drawing-rooms decorated and furnished, likewise 
her own rooms, her boy’s rooms, and all the best guest-chambers, 
in the most approved modern style, the bishop’s assets might be 
represented by a cipher, while his liabilities had run up to thou- 
sands of pounds. 

If added to all this upholstery and painting, before the bishop, 
engrossed with professional duties, receiving representative clergy 
on business, conducting a vast correspondence, and in a whirlpool 
of initiatory diocesan affairs, has had time to look quietly round his 
domestic hearth, his wife has embarked upon glass, china, plate, 
and ornaments ; has bought a magnificent grand piano ; has added 
to it a twenty-five-guinea violin, in order to inspire her son with a 
desire to learn to play upon that instrument ; and if, over and above 


TEACH ME FEARLESSLY 


199 


all this, she has begun to indulge a pretty taste in pictures, it will 
scarcely furnish matter for surprise if his lordship should find cause 
for consternation when he discovers himself face to face with the 
actual state of his exchequer. 

Dr. Garfoyle, passionately in love as he was with his bright and 
bewitching bride, was overwhelmed witli all the business that besets 
a bishop who makes it a point of duty to welcome, ratber than to 
repel, every legitimate comer. Yet for all this he was not a man 
to be inattentive to the cost of his strictly private affairs ; and he 
meant to know all that went on in his own house. To that end he 
reclaimed all the rough deal furniture from St. Amwell’s Vicarage, 
which Mrs. Trupper had already appropriated to the servants’ hall, 
and caused it to be placed in his own private study; while the fur- 
niture of his bedroom from the same vicarage sternly and plainly 
emphasized, in his dressing-room, the vast divergence between his 
wife’s taste and his own. 

So great was his sympathy with his bride that it had at first 
pleased his fancy to see her delight in surrounding herself with 
beautiful objects of luxury and art. He had no theoretical acquaint- 
ance with the cost of such articles, never having considered them 
before in his life, and for the first time he appreciated the pleasure 
of possessing a private fortune, when he found that it enabled him 
readily to gratify Victoria’s desires. He was prepared to give her 
all he could afford, just as an indulgent parent gives expensive toys 
to an idolized and only child ; with this difference, that the pre- 
cious child seldom has free liberty to go to the toy-shop and pur- 
chase for itself, without so mucli as consulting anyone about the 
price to be paid for the articles that take its vfancy, and such was 
virtually Victoria’s practice. It was indeed some time before the 
bishop became aware of the value of the things with which his 
wife was so lavishly presenting herself in his name. 

Then there were Victoria’s milliner’s and costumier’s bills which, 
ignorant as her husband might be of the fact, easily ran to three 
figures — had, indeed, run into four before the auspicious day in July 
whicli made Dr. Garfoyle at once a bishop and a bridegroom. The 
bride had brought with her a large supply of these very interesting 
documents, all unpaid, of course ; but could mortal bishop have 
been so churlish in his first participation in the delicious results. 


200 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


which she procured for the delight of his eyes and the gratification 
of his instincts of external perfection, as to question suspiciously 
the cost of the pleasure received ? No ! He smiled, praised, won- 
dered, worshipped, and imagined that his bride had long owned, or 
possibly even fabricated with her own tasteful fingers, the dainty 
garments in which she always appeared before his ravished eyes ; 
and, when calculating his own probable share in her future expend- 
iture, he supposed that an allowance of a hundred a year would be 
a very handsome sum even for the wife of a wealthy bishop, whose 
husband loved the very ground she honored by her tread. 

Dr. Garfoyle had no intention, however, of remaining in igno- 
rance as to what so nearly concerned himself. There was a con- 
science clause in every transaction of his life, and his marriage 
furnished no exception to this rule. Personally he was, of course, 
a man of simple habits, not merely as a matter of taste but also as 
a matter of duty. To live upon the least, to give away the most, 
and ever to prefer simplicity to show ; to set an example of utter 
unworldliness in matters of convention and of fashion ; these were 
axioms too firmly held by him to be set aside through mere inadvert- 
ence or abstraction of mind. So Victoria found that her giddy 
round of unlimited expenditure was likely to be very quickly cut 
short. Daily she was made aware, even during her first month’s 
residence at Crojdand, that a crisis of enquiry, of probable protest, 
or even of positive prohibition on her husband’s part, was rapidly 
overtaking her. He constantly informed her of his strict intention 
to regulate their domestic and social expenditure, to assign to it 
absolute limits which must not be overpassed. He entreated her 
urgently to procure and lay before him, without delay, a record of 
all her outstanding debts, whether incurred before or since her 
marriage. He announced a desire to discharge the accounts of the 
upholsterer and the furniture people at once. He insisted that the 
piano should be paid for immediately ; asked the price of the 
violin, and objected to it strongly ; uttered the strongest opinions 
as to the unlimited credit which, in her present secure position as 
his wife, Victoria was only too thankful to avail herself of. 

“Wouldn’t you really like to give me sixpence in coppers every 
morning, dear, with a penny account book to put it all down in 
every night,” she once asked, “to have it audited by the chaplains 


TEACH ME FEARLESSLY 


201 


and passed by yourself every Saturday evening ? I have raised 
Bruce’s allowance ; would you like to know what it is ? Fourpence 
a week, no less, and Shadrach has twopence also from the family 
fund. Pray, does it strike you that that is excessive ? ” 

The gown she had on had cost over a hundred, but she was too 
discreet to remember that unimportant detail. The opals and 
diamonds which scintillated upon the breathing loveliness of her 
neck were not — as her husband fully understood her to have said — 
“ an heirloom in the Goldenour family,” but were, as a matter of 
fact, a kind of wedding-present which Mrs. Garfoyle had made to 
herself out of the future income of the bishopric. At present she 
had this necklace, and a good deal of other jewelry besides, upon 
approval from one of the big London houses. She was at liberty 
to wear them, by advancing an instalment upon the price ; but, if 
she retained them, they would some day have to be paid for in full. 
She had put them on this evening to try their effect, also as a sort 
of hint to her husband that this was the kind of thing he ought to 
think of, in the way of a suitable expression of his joy in her beauty. 
Several times in the exuberance of his exalted emotion he had 
bewailed to her his inability to find any method of adequate expres- 
sion for the rapture which possessed him. Another man would 
have known better how to repay a young and beautiful bride for 
the happiness she procured him ; Mrs. Garfoyle was not the woman 
to be unaware of this. Here was one of the “ little lessons of love,” 
which he had implored her to “teach him fearlessly,” so she began 
his education without delay. 

“ Is it not pretty,” she said, turning to him with a bewitching 
smile, “ to see the opals shining like mysterious gleams of moon- 
light,. amid the tiny drops of diamond sunlight, just where the 
little tendrils of my hair wave in the bend of my neck ? See, do 
you not want to kiss the place ? You may if you like. It is too 
soon to take these little things for granted yet.” 

“ I take nothing for granted where you are concerned, my dar- 
ling,” he replied, availing himself readily of the gracious permis- 
sion. “ For your least look and smile, I thank you from the bottom 
of my heart ; but you do not require these meretricious ornaments. 
Leave these gewgaws for those who are not, as you are, quite superior 
to the need of such embellishment.” 


202 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


“ Ob, we are none of us above the need of art to make ourselves 
acceptable,” she said. “ Pardon me, Terence, but surely that is 
too crude a mistake for you to make; ecclesiastic as you are. 
What about your vestments and your ceremonials — eh ? ” 

‘‘There is no parallel,” he replied, hastily and emphatically. 
“ Our vestments are not worn for our own sake.” 

“ Are they not, indeed ? ” she said quickly. “ Are they not to 
beautify you, or to dignify you for the service you engage in ? 
What else are all liveries? An apron and lawn sleeves are your 
livery, diamonds and opals are mine : while the one is obligatory 
upon you to perform in, the other is fitting for me to appear in.” 

“ They do indeed become you well,” he said, waiving the ques- 
tion with the air of an indulgent father. 

“ Then we will keep this necklace,” she said ; this being, as she 
well knew, as near a permission as she was likely to extort. 

She had dazzled him, in fact ; had niomentarily closed his eyes 
with the love-light, which she knew so well how to shed around 
her. But when he prosaically recovered himself and actually ven- 
tured to enquire the price of the jewels, even to search for a shop- 
ticket and to wish to know with singular ineptitude if the thing 
“ was marked in plain figures,” she had reached the door of the 
room. She was on her way to take a last look at the decorations 
of the dinner-table in the brilliantly lighted dining-room below. 
It was the occasion of their first formal dinner-party since the 
bishop’s appointment. 

Jewelry and kisses are private affairs, excusable possibly even 
when the bridegroom is a bishop of mature age, and the bride a 
widow ; but the appointments of the dinner-table, when the head 
of the diocese entertains his leading clergy and their wives for the 
first time in his official capacity, are not to be left to individual 
feminine discretion. Hence Dr. Garfoyle deliberately followed 
his wife, intending to assist at her preliminary survey of the festive 
scene. Hearing his footsteps behind her, she must, however, have 
changed her intention, for when he entered the dining-room she 
was nowhere to be seen. 

On the threshold of the handsome apartment all the smiles died 
out of the bishop’s face. He gasped, and stood for a few seconds 
transfixed in the doorway. Then he put on his spectacles, which 


TEACH ME FEARLESSLY 


203 


he had not required for the admiration of near and beautiful objects 
upstairs. His countenance first paled, then glowed with anger at 
the sight of the magnificent preparations which he beheld. 

Table and sideboards were loaded with the most lavish display. 
He beheld a board spread as though for a prince. Everywhere 
a costly and sumptuous profusion of gold and silver ornaments, 
whose barbaric values he was better able to guess at than the pos- 
sible price of the flashing stones which adorned his lovely lady’s 
neck. The stones might be false, mere paste ; but all these centre- 
pieces and beautiful ornaments were assuredly no sham. This 
was no inn-parlor to be adorned with gilt or plated wares. Then 
too there was the china, the glass, the whole elaborate structure 
alike in excess. 

The disturbed bishop picked up an elaborately decorated “ menu 
tablet,” which lay before his own proposed place, and read such a 
list of the viands which he was about to set forth before his clerical 
guests as choked him by anticipation. Nor was this the worst ; he 
turned to the sideboard, and there — rigid total abstainer as he was 
well known to be — he perused a tabulated and dated wine list, 
obsequiously handed to him by the stately butler ; wines to accom- 
pany appropriate dishes judiciously selected by that functionary 
himself, who now stood confidently laying himself out for the 
bishop’s approval. 

‘‘By whose authority was all this done?” Dr. Garfoyle asked 
in tones more stern than he would assuredly have used in exhorting 
any impenitent sinner. 

“ Beg your pardon, my lord ? ” 

“ By whose authority was this table arranged, this list written ? 
How is all this display to be accounted for?” 

“ Beg your pardon, my lord, by Mrs. Garfoyle’s orders. You 
was too busy to be disturbed, it stood to reason ; and being,” he 
added with a deprecatory smile, “ not accustomed to drink wine 
yourself, Mrs. Garfoyle entrusted the selection of wines from the 
cellar to myself ; as I superintended the laying down myself per- 
sonally, of course I was naturally best qualified to enter into it.” 

“Into the cellar? Into what cellar?” asked the bishop in 
amaze ; he had no idea that he possessed such a thing, unless it 
were a cellar full of coals. 


204 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


He had indeed strictly determined never to own any other 
receptacle for liquors than the domestic filter or a case of mineral 
waters. 

“ Yes, my lord ; from the cellar taken over with the fixtures from 
the executors of the late bishop ; laid down by him and me during 
his lifetime. I should have brought you the cellar-book, my lord, 
only Mrs. Garfoyle desired for you not to be troubled with details. 
Mrs. Garfoyle herself, sir, if I may be allowed to remark, is a very 
good judge in such matters.” 

Dr. Garfo^de remembered the pretty ostentation with which 
Victoria drank her glass of Apollinaris at luncheon, and began to 
wonder when she had made these opportunities of examining the 
late bishop’s cellar; but even now his astonishment was tempered 
with gratitude and admiration. How capable she was ! How effec- 
tive in everything she undertook ! The fault was his : he should 
have made time to explain his views to her; he should have shown 
lier how, as a question of principle, the bishop’s wife must set an 
example to all the clerical families in the diocese, in simplicity and 
frugality of living and entertaining. Of course she could not be 
expected to grasp all this untaught; he ought not to have neglected 
at once to lay it before her. Naturally she had wished to give her 
guests the best that it was in her power to procure for them. 
Although, as matter of judgment, he absolutely disapproved of her 
arrangements, yet how kind and thoughtful it was in her to have 
taken all this trouble to spare him the distraction of distasteful 
concerns ! 

Time was hastening on. The hour for dinner had nearly arrived, 
yet it might not be too late to insist upon radical alteration of the 
obnoxious arrangements. This dinner, this initiatory feast, would 
be the talk of the diocese. Here was everything spread in his own 
sight, and in the sight of all his guests, which most moved his 
unworldly soul to anger and abhorrence. 

A wasteful profusion of the most expensive foods, marked by a 
reckless preference for everything that was costly and out of season. 
An epicure’s taste in dishes, accompanied by a connoisseur’s knowl- 
edge of vintages, sanctioned by the first meal which celebrated his, 
Bishop Garfoyle’s, entrance upon his pastoral duties. It must be 
confessed that the sort of meal which the bishop would secretly 


TEACH ME FEARLESSLY 


205 


liave preferred, although he had not dared to name his ideas to his 
wife, would have been tea and cakes, while a few jam tarts added 
would not have strained his principles ; eggs, too, he held to be very 
unobjectionable, with some non-alcoholic drinks upon the sideboard. 
Surely his memory did not mislead him. Had he not especially re- 
quested his wife that this evening’s entertainment might he “ simple 
and inexpensive” ; hospitable in quantity, but plain in quality? 
Inwardly, he had designed that it should partake of the nature of 
a religious service, and he had thought with much seriousness 
about it. 

This butler, and the footman too: it now occurred to Dr. Gar- 
foyle to remember that he had intended to keep only maid-servants, 
and that he had requested his wife to give these notice, when he 
first took possession of his predecessor’s house ; in which they had 
been only allowed to stay on, on sufferance. Their time was up; 
why had they not disappeared, and where had these others come 
from ? For he counted at least three other men, who were 
strangers to him, standing about in various angles of the hall. 

The critical moment was reached. He could not undo what his 
wife had done, in her absence, without offending her. He blamed 
himself and rushed to find Victoria. She was not in the brilliantly 
lighted drawing-room ; the boy Bruce sat there alone, deeply in- 
terested in a book. He wore an artistic costume of bronze velvet, 
trimmed with old point lace, which set off his beauty marvellously. 
Shadrach, jealously habited by his ambitious mother in cinnamon 
serge and cheap yellow lace of the same description of coloring, 
was arranging the music-stands preparatory to practising his solo 
part in some glees which were, by Victoria’s arrangement, to be 
delivered by sundry members of the cathedral choir in the ante- 
chamber, after dinner. Shadrach had already been enrolled among 
the chorister boys of the cathedral. 

“ Where is your mother? ” the bishop anxiously asked of Bruce. 
‘‘I must speak with her at once.” 

‘‘She bade me tell you, father,” for so the boy voluntarily called 
him, “ that she had to go upstairs to put old Mrs. Pettit to sleep, 
before the company came, and she begged that none of us would 
disturb her.” 

Mrs. Pettit was the blind and deaf paralytic, the only one of the 


206 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


St. Amwell’s Vicarage patients who had survived to be removed to 
the palace. Mrs. Pettit still cherished the fond notion that angels 
shed the odor of divine perfumes which filled her chamber ; and 
that they still visited her couch to relieve her pain. She had never 
found her benefactress out. 

“ She has had three very bad nights, mother says, and she knows 
that if she is disturbed just now, there will be no chance of her get- 
ting any sleep at all,” Bruce added. 

“ Who knows it, Bruce ? Do you mean your mother or Mrs. 
Pettit ? ” 

“ I cannot say exactly,” answered the boy, closing his book and 
standing up, with glad, obedient brightness looking into his step- 
father’s anxious face ; the love between these two, the man and the 
child, was evident in every look or word exchanged between them. 
“ When we came into, the drawing-room we met my mother at the 
door, and she gave me the message that I have given to you. She 
said she should not come down until the people had actually begun 
to arrive. It is a pity that nobody but mother can content that 
poor old thing.” 

“ No one else can content any one of us, can they, my boy, when 
once we have found out what she is to us ? ” said the bishop, 
caressing the child’s head ; but he hastened upstairs with all the 
speed that was at his command, along a variety of passages, up 
other stairs, and through several green baize doors, till he reached 
the door of a distant room in which the blind and deaf paralytic 
was wearing out the melancholy remnant of her monotonous 
years. 

He found the door locked ; but, after all, the woman was deaf; 
he should not disturb her, although he might disturb his wife in her 
ministrations to her. What was the risk of a loss of a night’s rest 
to one poor old woman, who must soon pass into an eternal silence, 
from which no bishop’s voice on earth would have power to summon 
her, compared with the disastrous effect of such an example of 
apparently extravagant regard for the gratification of the senses, 
and for such an ostentatious display of the advantages of wealth, as 
that which Victoria’s arrangements, left uncontrolled, would com- 
pel him to give to his clerical friends ? He knocked impatiently at 
the door. 


TEACH ME FEARLESSLY 


207 


‘‘ Wbat is it ? Who has come ? Pray do not disturb me for just 
five minutes more ! ” pleaded, within, the voice which he loved so 
well ; and the picture of his wife with the diamonds and opals 
sparkling on her lovely neck, in all her magnificent attire, the nurse 
of the helpless and afflicted creature, in that plainly furnished room, 
rose up before the bishop’s imagination, in all its vivid intensity of 
realistic effect. But that other picture from down below effaced it. 
And he grew warm with anticipative shame as he saw himself 
seated in half an hour, or even less, at the bottom of his own table, 
the mere puppet of his servants’ will, as they handed round seduc- 
tive dishes and stimulating beverages which it offended his con- 
science to offer or to share. So he resolutely set aside the lovely 
vision of what must be taken as his wife’s angelic devotion and 
beauty, and manfully replied : 

“ But I must disturb you, Victoria. It is a matter of principle; 
it is of the greatest importance. Pray attend to me at once, or I 
shall be positively driven to act independently of you ! I cannot 
possibly permit such a display as has been prepared for our guests. 
I cannot conceive where all that plate has come from. I really 
must beg your immediate attention. I also wish to learn by what 
authority the butler has been permitted to take upon himself such 
a catalogue of wines. This is really a very serious matter, my 
dear!” — hammering lustily at the door. “I must really entreat 
you to come downstairs with me at once. I could not set your 
arrangements aside without consulting you. I should be loath 
indeed to give orders contrary to yours in your absence. I must 
positively beg your assistance. I expect to hear the first arrivals 
at any moment. Pray come with me, Victoria, and assist in rectify- 
ing what is wrong.” 

Then Victoria’s voice, in soft and tender tones, like those of a 
dove cooing upon its nest, met his ears. 

Oh, dear, what is wrong ? Have they not done as I told them ? 
How sorry I am ! But surely, dear, you can see to it now. Poor 
Mary Pettit has her head on my arm. Go, dearest husband, for 
love’s sake, and see to it for yourself. You will surely know what 
is best. If they have not done as they should, it will be a matter of 
a few moments to set it all straight. Pray suppress or alter all 
you will, or call Mrs. Trupper, she is— or should be— very well up 


208 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


in your ways. She knows your simple tastes, which of course 
these others cannot do; but poor Mary Pettit seems very failing 
to-night : she has just dropped off into a troubled sleep, with her 
head at rest on my bare arm. Call Trupper or Pye, and bid them 
do just as you wish. They have orders to come for me here the 
minute that the people begin to arrive.” 

The bishop turned away, pondering upon the second little lesson 
which it was his fate to receive. 

“ But can you not come, my dear love ? I should be so deeply 
grieved to contradict your wishes in the matter.” 

The bishop waited for an answer ; none came, and he went 
away with a sigh. He was not himself ready for dinner ; he had 
been beguiled into spending the brief moments which he had 
designed to devote to his own toilet to affectionate admiration of 
his wife’s. He hurried to his room, not, however, omitting to ring 
the bell in Victoria’s room loudly as he passed through it. In the 
course of five minutes it was answered deliberately by Mrs. Pye. 
He shouted to her to go downstairs into the dining-room, and to 
desire the butler to wait upon him. The man came, received the 
bishop’s hurried instructions to suppress three-fourths of the wines 
upon his list, and to remove certain prominent ornaments from the 
table. 

Hastening downstairs as soon as possible after his messenger, 
the bishop had no sooner entered the dining-room than he found 
himself confronted with the dean, the archdeacon, and sundry 
other eminent clergymen, whom his butler had already ushered 
into the room, with the view of showing them their proper places 
at the table. The hall was filling fast with the expected guests, 
and the host had the additional mortification of being caught by 
his new friends apparently anxiously surveying and personally 
approving of the display which had excited his disgust. He beat 
a hurried retreat to the drawing-room, where Victoria came smiling 
in to receive her guests as though nothing at all had happened ; 
which indeed it had not, for somehow, when they descended, the 
table was pretty much as it had been before. The gold and silver 
ornaments were about as numerous, and all the wines came round 
just as the butler had intended ; the bishop refusing to pass them, 
even at dessert. He himself broke a roll of bread which he found 


TEACH ME FEABLES8LY 


209 


in his dinner napkin, and drank a glass of water, which he presently 
procured with difficulty. His state of mind was so widely removed 
from his usual calm serenity that he found it difficult even to 
inaugurate conversational topics with his customary felicity. Like 
one who has not on a wedding garment, he sat at this feast of his 
own providing ; as one ashamed of his own hospitality, he saw 
dish after dish make the circuit of his table ; as one who was a 
traitor to his own most cherished principles, he beheld one wine 
after another fill the brimming glasses of his secretly astonished 
guests. It was the mistake of an inexperienced man who had not 
yet learned to assign precise limits to his new wife’s authority ; to 
himself, as Victoria’s husband, a like experience would never again 
recur. The meal proceeded, the moment at which the bishop felt 
himself expected to say ‘‘ grace ” came. He would most cheer- 
fully and tliankfully have said it over porridge and beans ; but 
this meal had been so far from what he had intended ! He had 
inwardly regarded it as his first communion with kindred souls, in 
this his diocese. For him it was to have had a hidden siffnifica- 
tion, purely symbolical and sacramental. When the moment of 
expectation came he felt that all eyes were turned upon him ; all 
ears attentive, to hear his thanksgiving for the viands the sight of 
which he had loathed. His gorge rose, or some obstacle of grief 
rose in it. 'No articulate sound proceeded from his lips ; he made 
a sign to his chaplain, the conventional words were gabbled, and 
the penance was ended. 

Victoria rose to depart, following her ladies ; but as she passed 
her husband by the door,slm swept his fingers with a secret, caress- 
ing touch, which thrilled his jarred nerves with a mingled effect of 
joy and torture yet unknown to him ; and it meant simply a state 
of increasing sensibility to his wife’s moods, as dictated by her 
moral condition. Soon he was to become acutely aware of a new 
range of sensibility to his wife’s shortcomings. Willingly indeed 
had he carried her sorrows before their marriage; henceforth he 
must also share the burden of her failings, even of her sins ; divid- 
ing in no even portion the bitterness of the repentance which they 
procured for him, if not for her. 

After all the guests had gone that evening the bishop retired to 
his study, sitting alone over the fire ; the door opened and Victoria 
14 


210 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


peeped in, still in her lovely toilet. She came behind him 
noiselessly, took his head in her two hands, and embraced him, 
smiling. He observed that the subtle sense of some emanation 
peculiarly sweet and unique, which he was accustomed to associate 
with her bewitching presence, was exchanged for the first time for 
some strong artificial perfume, such as every chemist sells to any 
lady’s-maid. The impression of artificiality gave external form to 
his dissatisfaction. Swift to read the lines imprinted on his coun- 
tenance by the effect of her own personality, Victoria exclaimed : 

“ Am I not perfectly poisonous to-night, with this dreadful reek 
of musk ? ” 

“ Why do you use it ? ” he asked. “ I never noticed it before.” 

“For poor Mary Pettit’s sake. I have sprinkled it upon her bed, 
and she still believes that her poor chamber is redolent of angels, 
so she does not miss me when I leave. Indeed, unless I touch her, 
she no longer knows whether I am there or not. She is still sur- 
rounded by an odor of sanctity ! ” and, as she said this, Victoria 
laughed merrily. 

“ Such conduct, ray beloved,” he said, holding both her hands 
while he spoke, “ is, like our festal display of the evening, hardly 
in accordance with the simple truthfulness of nature which it has 
been my joy to admire in you.” 

“ My dear lord,” slie said promptly, “ pray learn at once that I 
am nothing if not dramatic; to get any flavor out of life at all, 
you must not onl}^ live it but dramatize it. Pray comprehend 
without further dela}^— it will save trouble in the end — that I am 
one of those women who, as soon as they cease to set examples to 
themselves, become warnings to others ! I have not yet actually 
decided whether, as the wife of the Bishop of Croyland, I shall 
most largely find m}^ uses as a warning or as an example. You, I 
know, of course prefer the latter ; but consider now — is it not fairly 
possible that as much service is done to mankind by those who 
immolate themselves as examples of what comes of doing the wrong 
thing, as well as hy those superior persons who display the advan- 
tages of doing the right ? Do you not suppose it takes more cour- 
age to be a warning rather than to set an example ? It may even 
represent a higher form of self-sacrifice. There, now I’ve left you 
something to consider ! Good-night ! ‘ Do as thei bishop’s wife 


TEACH ME FEARLESSLY 


211 


does,’ or ‘ Don’t do as the bishop’s wife does,’ may in the end prove 
to be equally valuable advice when quoted by the wives of the 
common clergy, such as those who have dined with us to-night ! ” 
“ Victoria ! ‘ Tlie common clergy ! ’ That is a term of which I 

cannot sanction the employ. I entreat you ” 

But his wife had left him, laughing, and he subsided into a 
deeper world of revery. It must be remembered that he was still 
entirely and intensely under the influence of the passionate love of 
her beaut}^, which she knew so well how to fan into a perpetually 
rising flame ; and the conflict between the outer aspect of his for- 
tunes and the inward emotions of his soul was torture to his keen 
sensibility. To adore Victoria, and to disapprove her conduct ; to 
recoil from fellowship with her in the highest interests, while tied 
to s^^mpathy with her in personal association ; this was the power 
of dismaying contrast which shook, for the first time to-night, his 
troubled spirit. With a keen sense of dismay he realized once 
again, in mature life, and w’hen he had least looked for it, the 
attraction that there might be to crave even a supreme escape, for 
deliverance from the dominating influence of overmastering sensa- 
tion. On the former occasion, long ago, in his j^outh, this bias of 
mind had been the product of the simple circumstance of his rejec- 
tion by the woman upon whom he had set his affections ; whence, 
in his later experience of the perfect realization of his utmost 
desires, came this revival of that earlier agon}" ? 

Mystic as he was ever at heart, at this moment of absolute 
human solitude Dr. Garfoyle’s thoughts reverted with an almost 
wistful yearning to the vision of that hidden land of restful truth, 
to that Nirvana of the soul, told of by Eastern sages ; now to his 
imagination made doubly alluring as a relief from the strenuous 
efforts of modern endeavor demanded of one who had become at 
once a bishop of the nineteenth century and the master of a restless 
and ambitious woman’s destiny. He mused long upon the necessity 
for avoiding the inherent falsities of modern civilization; yet was 
there not in very deed a deep underlying truth contained in the 
remembrance that the ideal, spiritual state must perforce manifest 
itself in and by the actual, natui-al state; must grow up through it 
and out of it ; overfioming its resistance, just as the brown earth 
yields in the springtime to the upward impulse of the flowers, 


212 


THE HUSBAND OP ONE WIFE 


which by myriads force their way to life and beauty by very vir- 
tue of its apparent opposition. 

On the following Sunday there was a special service in the 
cathedral. Tlie bishop was to preach there for the first time. It 
was the thing to be present ; so every seat was occupied half an 
hour before the time, and it was with difficulty that the officials even 
reserved a chair specially set apart for Victoria in a prominent 
position, close to the raised steps of the cliancel. There seated she 
was virtually behind the pulpit, which was further advanced in the 
aisle. No sooner had the sermon begun than it chanced that Vic- 
toria’s eyes fell upon the white face of an elderly woman, who liad 
already been standing for nearly an hour, wedged in between the 
walls of the chancel arches and a small and compact body of un- 
yielding men. A thought darted into her mind which made the 
bishop’s lady smile; quick as she was in all her actions, she had 
inducted the white-faced old person into the seat of honor, and had 
taken up her own place on a stray hassock close by, before the 
astonished recipient of the benefit could collect her wits to remon- 
strate or to decline. It was done with most charming simplicity 
and elegance ; Victoria scarcely touched the hassock’s ears with 
her daintily gloved fingers, and her handsome skirts swayed and 
swept white circles round her on the dusty pavement, while her 
husband’s harmonious tones breathed earnest sounds into the 
empty space above the silent people’s heads ; thus she apparently 
listened to the sermon, a mark for universal interest and admira- 
tion. So few women could sit upon a footstool in an aisle with no 
loss of dignity or decorum ; but Victoria could — when she chose. 
Long ago, as we have seen, she did not choose ; but those were 
days wherein there might have been some mistake about her volun- 
tary acceptance of an inferior position. 

“ Terence,” she said that day at luncheon, while innocently sip- 
ping a glass of soda water, “it was such a pity you couldn’t see 
me this morning. I’ve kept my little vow. I expect you have 
forgotten all about it, but if you do make little vows you should 
keep them, should you not, especially when it becomes your per- 
petual obligation to set a good example ? I have sat upon a foot- 
stool in the aisle during the delivery of the sermon ! Now, do 3mu 
remember what I mean ; and how I said to you that day in Cam- 


TEACH ME FEARLESSLY 


213 


bridge that when I was a bishop’s wife I’d do it ; then and not 
before ? I pretty well guessed it would come true, even when I 
said it ; confident utterances carry their own completion ; bold 
words bring their own fulfilment. Did that come in your sermon, 
or in Bruce’s last copybook ? Forgive me. I’ve forgotten. 
Bruce, you shall write out this afternoon all you can remember of 
what your father preached this morning, and let me correct it 
when it’s done.” 

“Was it not a little too good to be true ? ” he asked, smiling. 

“ What, the sermon or my conduct ? If you mean the latter^ 
very likely ; but I meant to keep my word. There’s nothing like 
consistency, it’s a better thing than conventionality ; for which by 
the way it is often mistaken. Don’t you like to hear of it ? Now, 
why doesn’t it please you ? Why, I’m sure it was humility and 
unostentation ; and those are the things you are always sighing for, 
early and late.” 

“ Dramatized, my dear ; don’t do it again.” 

“ Well, and what does all the drama aim at when it is most effect- 
ive, if not the perfected expression of fine sentiment?” she asked. 

“Precisely, my dear one ; you confound a church with a theatre? 
a sermon with a play ; that is exactly my meaning.” 

“ My position is my part,” she answered ; “ I am thankful when 
I play it well ; and pray applaud and do not hiss me, I entreat you. 
I am easily discouraged, and your age lends weight to your cen- 
sure, my lord.” 

The bishop apologized at once for both. 

“ I am nothing,” she kindly explained, “ if I am not dramatic — 
no one gets anything out of life if they merely live it and do not 
dramatize it. Whatever you expect to get out of life you must 
already have taken care to put into it. There is general wisdom 
for you, bishop ; and for particular advice you will be wise ever to 
remember that the woman you have married is one of those who, 
the moment that they cease to set examples to themselves become 
warnings to others.” 

“ Really it was charming to differ from such a sweet-tempered 
woman as this,” so the bishop fondly tried to believe ; moreover, 
had he not entreated her “ to teach him fearlessly, and was not all 
this an educational process for him ? ” 


214 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


CHAPTER XIX 

ON THE TOP OF AN OMNIBUS 

Early in November the bishop went off on a round of visitations, 
confirmations, and so forth. He was to be absent a fortnight, 
every night of which he was to occupy a different room in a differ- 
ent parsonage house and to inspect different churches and schools ; 
he had resolved in time to visit every parish in his diocese. There 
had been no more dinner-parties at the palace since the first unlucky 
attempt. Both husband and wife felt that before another was 
given something would have to be decided as to whose arrange- 
ments were to have the preference ; and pending the decision, by 
common consent no more formal invitations were issued. Mean- 
while Victoria had accepted an invitation which her first husband’s 
elder brother. Sir Peregrine Goldenour, and his wife had virtually 
given to themselves, to come and stay with her at Croyland during 
her husband’s absence ; and she took the opportunity of giving 
another party during their stay. 

On the afternoon of the day on which this event was to come 
off, she was sitting alone in the drawing-room, when an unlooked- 
for visitor was announced. This was none other than Mr. Brabazon- 
Farnaby. He explained his presence by saying that he came into 
the neighborhood on a matter connected with his sister’s stables — 
in fact to cast his eyes upon a pair of horses which might possibly 
suit her for a new carriage. But Victoria was not altogether dis- 
inclined to believe in the power of her own superior attractions ; 
and she did not give the horses all the credit for dragging Mr. 
Farnaby out of town at an important crisis in his public and private 
affairs. 

“ Why, I didn’t know you had a sister ! ” she exclaimed ; “ and 
how on earth do you come to be here buying horses for a sister that 
I never heard of, when your government and your chief are, as 


ON THE TOP OF AN OMNIBUS 


215 


everybody knows, minded that you should be in Constantinople, 
shadowing the Sultan ?” 

“ I was sent over. I came back as the bearer of important de- 
spatches from my chief to our authorities here.” 

“ It’s a queer tale,” said Victoria. 

“ Possibly,” responded Mr. Farnaby ; “ but as I am neither a dis- 
charged gardener nor a footman out on leave, suppose we drop the 
subject. I am here. That is enough for me, if not for you, 
Mrs. Garfoyle. The bishop is away on a confirmation tour, I 
believe ? ” 

“ Yes, the bishop is away,” she said, “ but what do you know 
about confirmations ?” 

“ Well, I certainly do not wish to be operated upon myself; and 
I am not aware that I ever took the trouble to read a similar set of 
notices before I perused that which informed me that the bishop 
would be absent, but ” 

“Let us return to the horses,” said Victoria impatiently. “ Why 
shouldn’t you make the purchase for me, instead of for jmur prob- 
lematical ‘ sister ’ ? If she actually exists — which, pardon me for 
doubting — she has horses enough and to spare, I am sure ; whereas 
if I want to dine out I have to go in a dirty cab, and am even 
thinking of buying a book of tram tickets for my expected visitors. 
My credit is good now, in both worlds ; I will repay you at once. 
Well ? Why do you hesitate ? ” 

“ I am not afraid to take the risk, Mrs, Garfoyle,” said the gen- 
tleman, with a slight emphasis upon the name, which might be 
taken to imply that it was in Bishop Garfoyle’s name and not in 
Victoria Goldenour’s that he possessed such a comfortable con- 
fidence. 

Victoria understood the innuendo and colored with anger. But 
at that instant she was relieved from further embarrassment by the 
entrance of her brother-in-law and his wife. 

“ Oh, Peregrine ! ” she said, hastily performing the ceremony of 
introduction, “had I not already been asking you to do something 
for me in the way of a (carriage and horses ? and here is my friend, 
• Mr. Brabazori-Farnaby, quite providentially arrived, who knows all 
that can be known upon the subject. Now, do let me entreat you 
both to devote yourselves, early and late, to my service. I shall 


216 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


expect you both to take up the matter at once, as soon as I’ve 
given you some tea.” 

“ Each of us go and buy you a horse and ride it home in triumph, 
I suppose,” said the brother-in-law in derision, “ while my wife 
goes to the bazaar and purchases you a carriage outright. That’s 
just like you, Victoria. I expected to find you grown-up this time 
at least.” 

“And you never will,” said Victoria angrily, “in the sense in 
which you expect it.” 

“ I shall be most happy to make over any representative interest 
which I may possess in this purchase to Mrs. Garfoyle,” said the 
other man with formal politeness, as he accepted a cup of tea from 
the hands of the fair woman whom he had so lately desired to 
make his wife. 

“ That is right,” she said briskly; “ that is the proper thing to say. 
See, Everilda,” she added, turning to Lady Peregrine Goldenour; 
“ see what an example Mr. Farnaby is setting to your husband. 
I am sure you ought to be grateful for it.” 

“ Oil, a wife is the person least concerned in her husband’s com- 
pany behavior,” said the lady, who was suffering from neuralgia, 
and whom it did not amuse to flirt with Mr. Farnab}^. 

“ I saw a really handsome landau, with a new improvement in 
springs, which I could sketch better than describe ; look here, like 
this,” said Mr. Farnaby, taking his card-case out of his breast- 
pocket : “ it was finished in really good style. I could enquire the 
price for you if you wished, Mrs. Garfoyle ; I shall have to call at 
the place in Long Acre again on Wednesday. I could get the 
name of it, and then you could have it down at once on approba- 
tion, if you cared to incur the risk of its not being what you want.” 

Victoria flung herself eagerly into the subject. Sir Peregrine 
languidly consented to co-operate in the matter of seeing the horses; 
and, the affair being so far arranged, Mr. Farnaby blandly accepted 
an invitation to remove his personal belongings from a hotel in the 
town, and to make one of the party expected to dinner that night. 
On this occasion Sir Peregrine occupied the place of the bishop, at 
the bottom of the table ; and there was no other difference observ- 
able in the external arrangements. But the guests were not at all 
of the same order. Victoria had got other people down from town. 


ON THE TOP OF AN OMNIBUS 


217 


who took up their abode for a few days in the palace ; and the 
clergy were less represented than the county families, out of regard 
for Sir Peregrine’s prejudices. The bishop’s absence was an unim- 
portant matter to this set of people ; for what is the use of a bishop 
if not to be constantly vagrant ? For what does he exist but to be 
occupied with the recurrent discharge of ecclesiastical functions ? 

Lady Peregrine was a spare, dark little woman, eager and 
emaciated, with an unnaturally high color in her cheeks, and a 
restless light in her wandering eyes. She looked consumptive, but 
was possessed of an apparently inexhaustible store of vitality, for 
expenditure upon a low plane of action. She was ‘‘never up to 
much,” but she was always able to accomplish her own desires, 
and she was never still, and never permitted quiescence in others. 

The sisters-in-law had not been friendly in years gone by. 
Everilda, as the wife of the elder brother Peregrine, had always 
looked upon Victoria’s claims to consideration, as the wife of her 
husband’s younger and impecunious brother Frank, with a coldness 
which increased to aversion when by his untimely death Victoria 
was left a widow, with a son chargeable upon the family. Lady 
Peregrine had five little boys of her own, and though^ as her hus- 
band’s father had handsomely recognized the rights of primogeni- 
ture, she had never had cause to complain of the loss of the pittance 
bestowed upon Victoria, yet she had disliked the idea that Victoria 
and her boy needed support from the paternal purse. Every shil- 
ling which had ever been doled out to them had been regarded by 
this lady as withdrawn from her sons’ portions. 

Now, however, — as Mrs. Gruter had upon the wedding-day fore- 
seen would be the case, — no one was so prompt as Lady Peregrine 
to recognize Victoria’s change of prospects. It suited my lady to 
remember that relations might be permitted to pay each other 
visits of several weeks’ duration, and that they possessed the 
privilege of imparting family and domestic news to each other, 
and of making use of each other whenever convenient. She had 
never remembered the existence of these privileges in the days 
when Victoria was widowed and poor. But Victoria, whatever 
may have been her faults, had a sweet and unresentful nature. She 
took her sister-in-law just as she found her ; accepted her own 
invitation for herself and Sir Peregrine, and even suggested that 


218 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


the five little boys should accompany their parents on a visit to 
their cousin Bruce. 

Perhaps this concession in the end cost Victoria more than any 
personal association with Sir Peregrine or his wife ; for my lady, 
who had previously despised Bruce as a superior sort of a charity 
boy, dependent on the family bounty, was now jealously unfriendly 
toward him, on account of his good fortune. As his maternal 
grandfather, Sir Victor Bruce’s heir, Bruce’s expectations dwarfed 
those of the five immature Goldenours, and Lady Peregrine was 
one of those mothers who are never fair save to their own sons, 
and never maternal out of their own nurseries. 

Sir Peregrine and Lady Goldenour had purposely timed their visit 
to correspond with the bishop’s absence ; but manners required 
that they should prolong it a day or two after his return. No 
similar obligation, however, detained Mr. Brabazon-Farnaby, who 
duly departed after spending but one evening at Croyland, to exe- 
cute, so he assured her, Victoria’s command with reference to a 
new carriage and horses. It was rash ; but Victoria was not 
entirely without excuse in the matter. Whoever is, since excuses 
always come.flying at call ? 

It was true that the bishop’s thoughts had soared as high as a 
pony-chaise, in which his wife might drive herself about ; and hav- 
ing obtained this concession from his affection, Victoria thought 
the moment ripe to set up stables ; neither could she be expected 
to be very precise in her knowledge of the exact number, height, 
or price of the horses to be purchased, since she never was exact 
about anything. So she told Brabazon-Farnaby what she wished. 
He understood horses, and the bishop did not ; and of course if 
Mr. Farnaby was kind enough to undertake the commission at all, 
she was obliged to leave it to him. She could not send him to buy 
a pony, as though it were to be a shaggy thing of the big dog 
kind for Bruce ; nor a pony-carriage, as though it were to be a 
bath- chair to trundle herself humbl}^ up to the town in. 

It was true the bishop had already expressed his views about the 
expenses of their establishment. Her difficulties, Victoria felt, had 
not been few nor slight, but she put all this down to the eccentricity 
of which she was to cure him, as one of the kindest services she 
could perform for him. Then there was that verbal upholding of 


ON THE TOP OF AN OMNIBUS 


219 


prejudices, miscalled principles, to which Victoria held the clergy 
to be specially prone ; this disposition also must be checked in her 
bishop. No doubt it was the proper thing for a bishop to talk 
about “ setting an example of simplicity,” to preach “ modesty and 
humility in all the relations of life,” and to cry up ‘‘ moderation in 
all things,” but everyone knew just what the words were worth. 
Taken at its true value, this phraseology signified compromise. 
One footman instead of two. A hired house in town for the sea- 
son instead of one of their own, and one carriage, open or closed, 
instead of two or three. Dressmaker’s bills, too, should be paid 
once in five or six years, instead of being indefinitely postponed. 
Of course, a bishop’s wife must pay sooner or later ; Victoria per- 
fectly recognized the obligation, but the very respect due to the 
position, if it enforced moral obligations, at the same time con- 
ferred pleasant privileges, of which one, in the shape of unlimited 
credit, was not at all to be despised. 

At the end of three weeks the bishop returned from the tour of 
his diocese. He was met at the station by his adored wife. She 
was seated in a really magnificent equipage. It was open, for 
although the season w'as late, the day was a bright one in early 
December, and by her side sat her sister-in-law, with Sir Peregrine 
opposite. A footman took his humble bag and held the door wdde 
for him to enter. 

Dr. Garfoyle had only been briefly introduced to the Peregrine 
Goldenours at the wedding in July, and, short-sighted as he was, 
he failed to recognize them. Therefore, when with genuine cour- 
tesy he stepped up to the side of the carriage and stood bowing 
to the lady within it, he supposed himself to be indebted to her 
for having driven his wife to the station to meet him, but he 
declined the seat, which he concluded she was offering him, facing 
his wife. 

“ Jump in, Terence,” said Victoria, hiding some uneasiness 
beneath a semblance of petulance. 

“ To whom have I the honor of speaking in declining the favor 
of a seat ? ” he asked in some surprise. 

“ Why, you know my brother-in-law and Lady Peregrine Golden- 
onr. Get in,, Terence ; don’t keep us waiting here.” 

‘‘Then whose carriage is this? Lady Goldenour’s ? ” he 


220 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


enquired in some dismay, to the edification of the man who stood 
holding the door open for him. 

‘‘ Why, yours naturally. Come, now, don’t be so distressingly 
innocent, dear; give them your bag, get in, and we will tell you all 
about it.” 

Victoria accompanied this exhortation with a little laugh which 
sounded lightly, but beneath which tlie acute ears of her sister- 
in-law recognized a nervous quaver. Lady Goldenour relished the 
scene. 

The bishop stood still for a moment where he was, then he 
deliberately put on his glasses, and scanned the turn-out which he 
was told was his own ; but there was no irresolution in his atti- 
tude, it was calm and coldly critical. Having thus satisfied him- 
self as to what he actually saw, he bowed to tlie occupants of his 
carriage, took his bag from tlie footman’s grasp, and turned away. 
Abruptly, then and there, he hailed a starting omnibus, mounted 
on the box beside the driver, placed his bag between his feet, and 
departed along the High Street in pleasant conversation with the 
man who drove the vehicle from the station to the town. 

For a moment Victoria experienced a sense of consternation; 
really her husband’s eccentric habits were more pronounced than 
she had been aware of. 

“ Such a pity,” she said apologetically, to Lady Peregrine, 
*‘that husbands will do these little things before servants.” 

“ It’s the same with all men,” said the lady thus addressed con- 
fidentially ; “ even Peregrine is no exception to the rule, and, 
whenever they are particularly difficult, given that they are over 
forty, they are sure to make it ‘ a matter of principle.’ A young 
man can afford to be frankly nasty, but a middle-aged man always 
strives to justify his temper, in order to reconcile himself, if nobody 
else, to it.” 

Sir Peregrine was indulging in a fit of masculine abstraction 
during this confidential communication between the two ladies. 
He did not care to talk when out for an airing enfamille. 

“For my part, I sometimes wish there were no such things as 
‘ principles,’ ” sighed Victoria. 

“ Ah, dear, we should be worse off than we are without them,” 
responded her sister-in-law. “ Principles are, you see, to our 


ON THE TOP OF AN OMNIBUS 


221 


minds what petticoats are to our bodies — troublesome, but neces- 
sary inventions; men are so fortunate, they can really dispense 
with them both.” 

“ Not a bishop ! ” said Victoria. 

“ Yes ; even a bishop only gets as far as an apron, you see ; even 
he can’t arrive at a skirt. It’s a compromise for a petticoat, or a 
principle, call it which you will.” 

But Victoria was really uneasy at last. She felt that matters 
were growing serious far sooner than she had anticipated. She 
was becoming more and more involved in expenses of which she 
well knew that the bishop would absolutely disapprove, and he, on 
his part, was manifesting unmistakable tokens of a suspicious atti- 
tude of mind. He was beginning very quickly to learn the actual 
cost of things, to ask inconvenient questions, and to hint at an 
intention to assign positively ridiculous limits to the unrestricted 
exercise of her right to spend his income. 

Dr. Garfoyle was distinctly less easy to manage than his wife 
had expected, considering his age and his devotion to herself. 
There were capacities for sternness in his moral nature which irri- 
tated her, and aroused in her more facile disposition an uncomfort- 
able suggestion of latent antagonisms. Still it did not dawn upon 
Victoria’s mind that the principles ” of which she complained 
were more than an accidental investiture, an “ apron ” ; which 
appendage, by tact and persistency, the bishop might in time be 
got privately to lay aside. He was intensely in love with her, and, 
though he showed an awkward independence of judgment in many 
matters, yet Victoria legitimately relied greatly upon the conscious 
power by which she governed his affections. 

The carriage swept round the drive to the front door. Before 
the omnibus deposited the bishop in the mud outside the entrance 
gates of his abode, Victoria, the Peregrine Goldenours, and other 
visitors were already enjoying their five o’clock tea in the drawing- 
room. Dr. Garfoyle did not mount the stairs, but turned at once 
into his own study — the room which was modestly furnished with 
the white deal table and rough benches from St. Amwell’s Vicar- 
age. He sat down in a favorite old arm-chair which had come 
originally from his rooms in college, scribbled a word or two on a 
scrap of paper, enclosed it in an envelope, and sent it up to his wife. 


222 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


It was but a simple entreaty that she would descend to him, and she 
came. 

There was a soft rustle, the door opened, and with the sweetness 
of a breath of spring Victoria entered swiftly and buried herself in 
his outstretched arms. Dr. Garfoyle sank into his easy-chair, his 
sweet wife nestled beside him, her liead on his shoulder, lie^ soft 
hands caressing his still abundant hair. For three weeks they had 
been parted; now they were together again, each was penetrated 
with the sense of the other’s presence. It was enough ! Nay, it 
was too much for one of them ; and that one was not Victoria. 
She entirely preserved her presence of mind, for the moment was 
critical. 

Not immediately, however ; Dr. Garfoyle poured out the pent-up 
tenderness of his soul upon his beautiful wife ; testified to liis won- 
dering and reverent joy in the possession of her, and seemed to 
have momentarily dismissed the remembrance alike of the carriage 
and pair, and of the omnibus ; yet all the while Victoria knew that 
beneath the tenderest reception of her presence lurked, in this un- 
accountable masculine being, an obstinate power of resistance, 
untouched by the warmth of feeling which her charms evoked. 
To her it seemed an almost pitiful economy, in a man whose pro- 
fessional income was reckoned by thousands, to question his wife’s 
expenditure upon a carriage and a couple of horses. A pony for 
Bruce had been thrown in, but as yet he knew nothing of that. 

With Dr. Garfojde it was, however, as his wife had remarked, 
“entirely a matter of principle.” He had, in fact, determined that 
the question of extravagant display and expenditure should be 
fought out upon this question of a carriage ; since all principles, 
however vast, whether in dispute between nations, or between hus- 
bands and wives, must ultimately stand or fall upon some such 
narrow basis. Lady Peregrine’s petticoat analogy did but illustrate 
a common experience, namely, that all exalted sentiments are gener- 
ally apt to be driven to solicit expression by very infantine syllables. 
Perhaps that is the worst that may be said of them. 

Presently Victoria felt that it was coming. She removed from 
her position on the arm of her husband’s chair, and, sitting upon a 
deed-box at his feet, she looked steadily and encouragingly up into 
his face, while he strove to explain to her, with unshaken firmness. 


ON THE TOP OF AN OMNIBUS 


223 


that she was at liberty to use hired conveyances as often as she 
desired ” to do so. He would even go so far as to concede a 
modest little equipage such as he had previously suggested but 
‘‘ beyond a pony-chaise he would not go. If that gorgeous equipage 
was hers, it must be parted with at once.” 

It was very hard to resist the attraction of Victoria’s bewitching 
ways. When she sought to cast a spell over any man’s senses her 
power was great indeed. 

Dr. Garfoyle soon began to explain that he did not blame his 
wife for what he held to be a simple misinterpretation of his wishes. 
How could she comprehend them ? He thought that he perceived 
her to be innocently governed by a conception of what was due to 
himself as the bishop of the diocese and to herself as his wife. He 
remembered the humble lodgings in which he had found her first. 
It must be Ids part to educate her ; to lead her gently by the hand 
up to some higher view of the situation. His conception of their 
mutual relationships was primitive, nay, it was apostolic. 

Victoria, for her part, cared no scrap about the grounds of his 
determination. What woman ever does? A man wastes words in 
such explanations. The fact that remained to be dealt with was 
the only point for consideration ; namely, that a carriage had been 
bought, and that it must be got rid of. She was too wise to risk 
her power in a conflict based upon a single detail. So the bishop 
expressed his will, and she simply acquiesced with a charming grace 
most touching to his loving heart. Before her beautiful smile Dr. 
Garfoyle saw all his difficulties vanishing, magically ousted by the 
potent spell of an all-conquering affection. 

Sir Peregrine and Lady Goldenour were to leave the next day. 
That night, for the first time during their stay, Victoria turned 
into her sister-in-law’s room for ^ final confidential chat when they 
went up to bed. 

‘‘ Everilda,” said Victoria, leaning against the mantel-piece, and 
shading her eyes from the light with a fan, “I suppose it is not 
possible that Peregrine and you are in want of a new carriage, is it ? ” 

“ Oh, we want one badly enough, if it cgmes to that, and we’ve 
plenty of room, if not in town, at any rate at the park, to put up 
any number, but — excuse me, Victoria, has it really come to that? 
And so soon ? ” 


224 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


Victoria nodded. 

“Perhaps it will be different to-morrow morning?” Lady Pere- 
grine suggested. 

“ There’s no chance,” said Victoria. 

“ Is the whole thing really paid for, horses and all, already ? ” 
asked Lady Peregrine. 

“Yes, unfortunately, they are,” sighed Victoria; “ for a wonder, 
every farthing, cash down. My check against Mr. Brabazon- 
Farnaby’s ; under the circumstances, you see ” 

“ Oh, yes, he was the man at Nice, I remember. Have you told 
the bishop who it was that you commissioned?” 

But this question Victoria chose to regard as indiscreet, so she 
turned a deaf ear to it. She had not forgotten Lady Peregrine’s 
share in the threat to deprive her of the custody of her own child, 
should she fix her choice upon that gentleman; she had been 
worsted possibly in the matter, but she did not choose to follow 
that conversational lead. 

“ Can you not get Mr. Brabazon-Farnaby to purchase them back 
for his sister ? ” 

Victoria replied abruptly that the gentleman had already departed 
for Constantinople, and that such an arrangement was “ not to be 
thought of.” Neither she nor Everilda believed in that “ sister.” 

“ Then, in that case, of course we must do what we can,” Lady 
Peregrine replied. “ Of course we can buy them of you, there’s 
no doubt about that, if the thing must be sold; but as to paying 
you ready money down, that I am sure Peregrine would never be 
prepared to accomplish. I cannot say when Peregrine would be 
able to pay you or the bishop. Of course he would make it as soon 
as he could; but, after all, Victoria, your husband should remember 
that we all did our best to support you in luxury and ease in the days 
before he appeared. If it comes to that, I consider that you owe us 
more than we are ever likely to be indebted to him or to you for.” 

Victoria perfectly understood that her sister-in-law intended to 
obtain possession of the carriage and horses as some little off-set 
against old scores ; that in fact she meant to take them as a comfort- 
able tip; and that she did not intend ever to pay a farthing for them. 
This being so, it must be confessed that Victoria displayed consid- 
erable self-control in passing over Lady Peregrine’s insinuations. 


ON THE TOP OF AN OMNIBUS 


225 


Shall you be in town in May ?” that lady asked, thus breaking 
an awkward silence. 

“ Most certainly I shall,” responded Victoria. 

“Precisely; you can have the use of the carriage then, since it 
will be with us ; that will be convenient for you. T suppose we 
couldn’t drive up to town instead of going by train, Victoria, send- 
ing the children and maids off first, of course ? That would be 
really a charming plan. I love driving about the country, and, 
you see,” she added, clapping her bony little hands, “ that will 
really relieve you, dear, of your embarrassment at once ! Let me 
kiss you, do ! How nice you are looking this evening, my child ! 
Joy at your thoughtful husband’s return? There, the matter is 
all settled. How clever we women are when we’re left to our- 
selves ! I will explain it all to Peregrine the moment that he 
comes upstairs, and you can assure your good bishop this very 
night that you have found an immediate purchaser for the obnoxious 
carriage and horses, without going out of the family; and that 
henceforth you are quite prepared to mount the knife-board of the 
omnibus, and to take drives with him up and down the town for 
the delectation of the inhabitants.” 

Victoria bore herself remarkably well throughout all this tiying 
interview, but “Confound her politics,” she inwardly ejaculated, 
as she traversed the passage to her own room. To what unknown 
god she addressed the prayer she might scarcely have been pre- 
pared to explain, but certain it is that a glow of justifying confi- 
dence in her own luck was the result. She did not believe that 
everything was going to fall out just as Lady Peregrine had 
planned; though what “stars in their courses” were to fight for 
her, she was utterly unable to predict. 

For the present the bishop was delighted with his sweet wife’s 
compliance with his demand ; for “ demand ” it had been, though 
labelled as a “ desire.” 

As a gentleman himself, he was of course fully satisfied with 
the Peregrine Goldenours’ proposed purchase of the carriage and 
horses ; and he entertained not a moment’s suspicion of the abso- 
lute satisfactoriness of the arrangement from a pecuniary point of 
view. To enquire further would have been an impossibility, and 
also an insult to his wife’s relations. 

15 


226 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


CHAPTER XX 

SOMETHING WRONG 

Very early the next morning, before anyone in the bishop’s 
dwelling was awake or up, hasty feet were heard tramping along 
the streets, harsh voices shouted eager questions and received 
excited replies ; and the stream of human life, absorbing perpetual 
accessions, increased in volume and velocity as the moments 
passed. Presently, from several outlying pit oflSces, clanging bells 
began to ring with alarming and unaccustomed clamor. But all 
those whom they might have summoned were already on the spot ; 
no need of compelling their appearance. Though not a large col- 
liery, district, there were several mines in the immediate neighbor- 
hood which, when in full working order, gave employment to the 
majority of men and lads in the vicinit}^ These mines had the 
reputation of being unusually free from gas; certain it was that 
accidents were few and far between, and it may well have been 
that a supposed freedom from peril had led to a want of caution 
on the part of some of the workmen. 

Down the streets on this early morning the rumor ran that some- 
thing was wrong in one of the pits. “ Something,” ‘‘ not much,” 
was said at first, to explain what had been heard at the pit’s mouth : 
a report, a tremor of the ground, a flash of fire issuing from the 
mouth of the shaft, succeeded by stifling volumes of dense smoke. 
But not many men had gone down in the cages, as the hour was 
yet so early. There was consternation enough, but it would be but 
a small affair at the worst ; not one of those gigantic calamities 
which appall the popular heart, and bombard public sympathies by 
the force of arithmetical as well as of dramatic representation. 

The first explosion was, however, followed by a second in a dif- 
ferent part of the mine ; and a party of rescuers had scarcely 
volunteered, when it became evident to the agonized crowd above 


SOMETHING WRONG 


227 


that these devoted men must in all likelihood have descended to 
share the fate of the first victims. And when, after very great 
difficulty, the workings were reached by a band of brave explorers, 
eighteen of the miners were found lying dead, and thirty or forty 
more or less terribly injured where the explosions had taken place. 

While all the comfortable folk were still asleep these men had 
gone to meet their fate ; not so very many after all ; but then the 
sufferers had mostly wives and families, whose estimate of the 
magnitude of their loss was unaffected by the consideration that it 
was not a big thing in mining disasters. There was another outlet 
about a quarter of a mile away; but this also was found to be 
vomiting smoke and fire ; while the sound of crackling and burning 
ahead proved to the rescuers who descended by the main shaft that 
the explosion had resulted in setting the rest of the pit on fire. It 
was certain that many of the men had heard the first explosion, for 
some of them had evideiltly been running back toward the pit shaft 
to escape, when they were overtaken and overpowered. At seven 
o’clock a second search party descended, accompanied by the mana- 
ger, a mining engineer, three doctors, and other miners who volun- 
teered. Then after a weary half-hour of waiting, the cage began 
to ascend with the injured men; ascending and descending, with 
the wounded first, scorched, blackened, torn and rent, in many 
cases disfigured with agony; while the dead bodies, which were 
subsequently removed by the ambulances, lay as though each man 
was in a peaceful sleep ; for these there had evidently been no 
struggle at all ; they had simply fallen as they had been overtaken 
by the poisonous gas or stifling smoke. 

When the bishop and Mrs. Garfoyle came down to breakfast. 
Lady Peregrine already had her bonnet on to show her readiness 
to be off ; like a child who has received an unexpected present, and 
who wants to get away with it before the donor finds out that it 
was all a mistake. She begged to have the carriage ordered at 
nine o’clock for their departure, and the bell was rung accordingly. 

The man who answered it looked excited, and whispered some- 
thing in the bishop’s ears. 

“An explosion ! did you say at the Dell Colliery?” Dr. Gar- 
foyle exclaimed, pushing back his chair and hurriedly rising. 

“ They are bringing them up, my lord. They have got them 


228 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


out, most of them. Many are frightfully injured. Some are dead. 
They say there are fewer dead than scorched and wounded. ’Tis 
an awful sight to see the wounded, so they say. There was many 
their own wives scarcely knew when they saw them,” and so on — 
all he knew and a little more. 

It was clear that the man shared the love of the uneducated for 
the recital of horrors. Lady Peregrine turned pale and stopped 
her ears. 

“ Oh, Peregrine, do let us get out of this at once,” she said. 
“Such things never happen in town. For mercy’s sake let us get 
back to London ! ” 

Victoria had heard and comprehended ; and clinging to her hus- 
band’s arm, she listened with dilated eyes. 

“ Let us go ! ” she cried. “ Come, husband, let us go to the pit 
village at once ! The carriage is ordered, let it come round at 
once ! ” 

“ For us ! ” said Lady Peregrine. “We want to get away ! ” 

“ For us ! ” said Victoria, as she left the room, following her 
husband. Lady Peregrine turned sharply, but Victoria had 
departed. She snatched a hat and mantle from the waiting Pye ; 
Dr. Garfo^de himself was distracted by her eager footsteps. 

At the door stood the much disputed carriage, awaiting the 
Peregrine Goldenours’ departure. Victoria stepped into it. With- 
out a word the bishop followed her. This was no moment for 
hesitation. He wanted to reach the pit village at once ; he would 
have ridden there on an ass or a bicycle, had either of these 
methods of progression served his turn. Indeed he would vastly 
have preferred the latter machine, had one been at hand. 

Speedily they were driven to the mouth of the upcast shaft. 
The dead bodies had already been removed, but the wounded were 
still being brought to the surface. Then the bishop saw a sight which 
he ever remembered to his dying day, with a warm glow at his 
heart. He saw his dainty, pleasure-loving wife stand side by side 
with the pit-bank wives ; with her own hands he beheld her assist 
in placing one blackened and bleeding creature after another upon 
the cushions of the vehicle which he had forbidden her to use. He 
beheld her tenderly supporting upon her knees the heads of men 
terribly disfigured by ghastly wounds, while they were gently 


SOMETHING WRONG 


229 


driven to their own poor homes, where their wives were ready to 
receive them. Already the corpses lay awaiting identification in 
an adjoining building ; these at least were hidden from sight. 
There were others yet among the living, to whom the bishop’s 
wife devoted her care, the sight of whom was enough to strike dis- 
may into the steeled nerves of the most hardened hospital nurse ; 
men torn with bleeding wounds or scorched by fires, with their 
flesh dropping off them in shreds ; yet while Dr. Garfoyle worked 
with heart and mind and hands, as hard as any miner present ; 
while he added his skill as a physician to his courage as a comrade 
and his charity as a Christian, he could but look and marvel at the 
simply amazing fortitude and energy of this young and dainty 
woman whom he had chosen for his wife. 

With her dress stained and blackened, her hands soiled, her face 
white to the lips, but calm and steadfast, smiling even upon the 
distracted women and shrieking children, Victoria moved to and 
fro on her errands of help and succor ; and her smile was, so the 
bishop felt, such as some pure dominant soul might smile, which, 
amid the wrack and ruin of a surrounding world, realized un- 
doubtingly the eternal endurance of an infinite compassion, and 
believing in it, translated it into human action. 

Then and there he could have knelt and worshipped — not the 
fugitive perfection of this sweet woman’s bodily presence, but the 
glorious beauty of the indwelling soul which animated it. This 
was what Victoria really was. He had seen her now, he felt, as 
she stood in the truer light of another plane of being. This was 
what, having once attained to, she must forever be manifested as, 
in his eyes. This was the highest truth of her being ; her eternal, 
upstanding personality in the sight of God and man. And the 
bishop, holding a collier while a local doctor bound up his hurts, 
bowed his head and gave thanks for the helpmeet that had been 
found for him. Could he ever remember again that this marvel- 
lous angel of help and healing had deceived him, only a month 
before, about the price of some paltry jewels ? and had devised 
strange complications about the purchase of some gold and silver 
plate ? Could he ever recollect again that her statements in society 
often made him question the actual testimony of his ears ; or turn 
with a momentary and lenient glance toward certain systems of 


230 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


philosophy hitherto discarded by him, whereby these discrepancies 
of observation and perce[)tion might possibly be more easily 
adjusted than they could be by his own more rigid code? The 
events of life are sufficiently various to reconcile one to all 
systems of philosophy, however alien to one’s native disposition, 
and so Dr. Garfoyle now learned. Another item, this, in the 
education which Victoria had promised him. 

Several of the wounded men had to be removed to the town 
hospital. They had got no wives to nurse them ; or they felt that 
their families were too large and that they would not have a fair 
chance with home nursing ; these Victoria arranged to have 
removed at once under her own supervision, to which end, hav- 
ing shutters placed across the carriage from seat to seat, she her- 
self went with them to attend to their needs. She had the sufferers 
conveyed two at a time, and never rested till she had safely 
delivered them all over to the hospital authorities. After all were 
accommodated there or in their own houses, there yet remained one 
man, a stranger ; he had neither home, wife, nor belongings, and 
was unknown to all those who surrounded him. At first he was 
terribly exhausted, but after a while he was able to tell Dr. Gar- 
foyle that his lamp had been extinguished by the first explosion, 
and that then he, an utter stranger in the pit, had groped about 
in the darkness till, overpowered by the blast of the second 
explosion, he fell and knew no more. He would not hear of being 
consigned to the hospital ; there was a strange defiant wildness 
about his manner ; he appeared to be homeless, friendless, and 
penniless ; yet he would have nothing to do with public assistance, 
and it was not clear what could be done with him. Excitement of 
brain and nervous exhaustion had in fact rendered him almost 
crazy. 

Victoria came up while his case w^as under discussion. Her task 
was so far accomplished. All the injured were resting on beds for 
the most part smoothed by her hands, and her present task was 
ended. 

“Put him in,” she said, “and let us take him home. It is not a 
surgical case ; he only needs rest and quiet for the shock to his 
nerves ; we can nurse him ourselves.” 

So the stranger was tenderly placed upon the cushions, now all 


SOMETHING WKONG 


231 


soiled and torn. Victoria, the miner, and the bishop drove back 
together in this carriage which, but yesterday, its owner had 
secretly vowed never to enter. Dr. Garfoyle himself was utterly 
done up. His heart had been wrung by conflicting emotions, he 
was at the end of his forces. But Victoria looked after him and 
her miner at once, insisting upon silence and quiet. She would 
not discuss the events of tlie day with him, nor would she ever 
after suffer them to be made a matter of conversation in any 
society in which she appeared. When all was over she neither 
wept nor fainted ; she would not even submit to her husband’s 
attempted expression of sympathy. 

“Do not touch me,” she said, drawing back with purposeful 
avoidance. “I am not fit. And oh, I am so thirsty ! I have rung 
my bell for Pye, and Bruce, and tea. Pray go back to your room 
and lie down.” 

Then she began to give orders clear and concise for the miner’s 
comfort ; while she removed the signs of her unwonted ministra- 
tions, dressed herself in pure white garments of spotless serge, and 
descended in due time to an eight o’clock dinner, like a nun from 
her chamber ; so fresh and sweet and pure that contact with the 
horrors and catastrophes of humanity seemed never to be thought 
of in connection with her. 

There was no sign of the Peregrine Goldenours ; but on enquiry 
Victoria learned that they had actually departed by an early train ; 
Lady Goldenour leaving behind her a special message with regard 
to a bonnet-box which was missing, and which had as a matter of 
fact been put into the carriage by mistake and duly conveyed to 
the scene of the disaster. 

“ You see, how like Victoria ! ” the lady had said to her hus- 
band; “going off in that excitable way and taking the carriage 
which was ordered for us ; when my things were actually in it, 
and when we had agreed to purchase it of her. Never even stop- 
ping to say good-by to us, either. If my bonnet-box is lost, she 
shall certainly pay for it, that is the fact.” 

“The bonnet-box, my dear, will represent your least loss out of 
it,” responded her husband, “ so you may as well face the worst at 
once. Victoria has got her own way ; that carriage will never be 
yours. I’d have backed her to win, had you asked me.” 


232 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


“ Oh, yes ; you would always stand up for any other woman 
against your own wife,” retorted Lady Peregrine ; from which 
point the conversation rapidly degenerated in tone. 

On the morning after the catastrophe at the mine, the bishop 
and his wife again drove out to the pit village at nine o’clock, to 
learn how the sufferers had passed the night and were progressing 
generally. Dr. Garfoyle had followed Victoria when she got into 
her damaged carriage without a word of objection. When they 
reached the miners’ dwellings, numbers of little children, black 
from playing in the coal refuse, came running up to see the grand 
lady and gentleman descend into their midst. 

“Give them a drive up and down in turns ; pack the carriage as 
full as it will hold,” said Victoria to the coachman and footman, as 
she followed her husband into the first dwelling, where lay a poor 
fellow whose legs, having been crushed, had been amputated the 
night before ; and Dr. Garfoyle, glancing back with complete 
satisfaction, saw ten grinning boys and girls packed into the seats 
just vacated by himself and Victoria, and driven off in triumph to 
enjoy an airing up and down, in full view of their proud mothers 
and other admiring neighbors. It was a very comical, but to the 
bishop a very reassuring sight, and he blessed Victoria for the 
original suggestion. When the first load was returned, the foot- 
man stood with his hand on the carriage door, looking more than 
doubtfully at his mistress. 

“ Take up another set,” she said sharply, “ and get on the box.” 
The man reluctantly obeyed her, and once more the equipage 
departed, to the admiration of all such of the mothers as, not hav- 
ing dying husbands inside, were free to come out of their doors 
and gaze at all that went forward. 

At the end of the street a publican of democratic sympathies, wish- 
ing to recognize a like spirit where he found it, and to encourage 
popular sentiments in others, came out with an inviting tankard. 

“I say, won’t you gentlemen get it hot ! Have something to cool 
your welcome,” he remarked, very evidently mistaking the authors 
of the arrangement, and handing up the pewter. 

“ Mrs. Garfoyle’s own orders,” said the coachman, recognizing 
the attention. So the story passed from mouth to mouth, and 
grew as it circulated. 


SOMETHING WRONG 


233 


For the next two hours the bishop and his wife were busily 
engaged in the cottages, visiting all the sujffering creatures who 
groaned beneath these humble roofs. Perhaps never was a bishop’s 
wife so popular before. Her praises rang in every mouth. The 
local papers took notice of her heroic conduct, her political sym- 
pathies were decided upon at once, but the tide of conservative 
feeling among county and clerical families set strongly against 
her. She, meanwhile, taking no notice whatever of the hubbub, 
whether laudatory or the reverse, continued to look after each 
wounded man in his turn, not forgetting the strange, half dis- 
traught patient in her own house, nor even neglecting to supply 
Mrs. Pettit with a daily dose of musk. The suffering men wor- 
shipped her, and her husband gave thanks night and morning upon 
his knees for the benediction of her incomparable presence. 

** And yet, you know, after all,” said Lady Goldenour, when her 
husband laid the Liberal local paper in her lap that she might read 
its high-flown account of her sister-in-law’s heroism and devotion, 
** and yet after all, you know. Peregrine, it is just because Victoria 
really has no nerves to suffer that she acts as she has done. 
Remember how she got over it when your poor brother was killed, 
and how we heard she comported herself when her boy was stabbed 
in Milan. Dear me ! if it had been you, or one of our dear boys, 
do you suppose that I should have got over it all as she has done ? ” 

“ No, my dear,” replied her husband briefly. “ I have no reason 
to suppose that yow would have acted as Victoria has done.” His 
tone .was enigmatical, and his wife was dissatisfied: she drove her 
conversational tin- tack in the harder. 

“ Victoria is shallow, that is what slie is. She has no nerves to 
suffer. A woman who felt more couldn’t have done it. Victoria 
always feels quite nicely; just enough and not too much ; now for 
me, my feelings are so acute that I never could undertake such 
gruesome things, you know.” 

‘‘ It’s a comfort, then,” said Sir Peregrine, that some women 
feel too little to act otherwise than well.” 

Perhaps his words were motived by a clear recollection of a 
nursery accident the week before, when the nursery-maid chopped 
off the tip of her own finger cutting bread and butter, and Lady 
Goldenour had been considered the chief victim in the affair. 


234 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


“ Victoria’s cold, that’s what she is ! ” the lady resumed. She 
looks nice ; but she really hasn’t any heart. A woman who could 
survive such an event as your poor brother’s death might W'ell be 
able to stand the sight of any number of wounded men ; but that 
is just the sort of stagey thing Victoria delights in. She is one of 
those creatures who thrive upon excitement, and like their sensa- 
tions strong ; what corresponds to pickles and pork in the region 
of the kitchen, you know.” 

All these sisterly criticisms were jerked out in a defiant manner 
by Lady Goldenour, as she sat in the elegant drawing-room of 
her London house, under the influence of her husband’s irritating 
silence. 

‘‘As to that carriage,” she continued, “it will not be fit to use by 
the time it gets here ; and we shall have to pay for the repairs.” 

At this point Sir Peregrine forsook his wife’s enticing company 
for the freedom of the smoking-room. Marriage presented itself to 
Sir Peregrine, as to many other middle-aged husbands and wives, 
chiefly as a discipline ; and while he smoked he wondered, as was 
his common custom, why he had married the particular woman 
whom he had selected. To confess the truth. Lady Peregrine was 
at the same moment perambulating the drawing-room carpet, and 
audibly asking herself the same question. But the wine was drawn 
and must be drunk ; and the nursery was the scene of her consola- 
tion, when the smoking-room was his ; and thither she presently 
betook herself. A man may wear a woman’s very soul out ; but 
her tiny children’s kisses may be worth the price she pays for them 
none the less — and a woman may fret a man to exasperation ; but 
he can swear and then escape, and so did Sir Peregrine. 

To return to Croyland. In the course of the next few days 
five more of the wounded miners succumbed to their injuries. 
These, together with the first victims of the catastrophe, were all 
to be buried together at the public expense. The funeral service 
was to be read by the bishop and attended by all the people in the 
place, big and little, important and insignificant alike. Victoria 
had been indefatigable from morning to night, and night to morn- 
ing. The town rang with her praises when her carriage was seen 
following the funeral cars, not empty, but filled with the widows 
of the men whose shattered forms occupied the sad row of coffins. 


SOMETHING WRONG 


235 


Victoria herself followed in a shabby fly, dressed in simple black 
garments and accompanied by two weeping women ; and her 
demeanor, as a curate’s wife afterward noted, was ‘‘ something 
simply lovely.” 

The bishop and his wife dined together alone on the evening of 
the miners’ funeral, and Victoria, who had worn mourning all the 
week, astonished her husband by descending resplendently attired 
in rose- colored silk. She seated herself opposite to him, with her 
feet on the fender, when dinner was over, shielding her face from 
the fire with a feather screen. She put a small billet of wood on 
the fire with a slender pair of tongs which she was always fond of 
manipulating, and said : 

“ Terence, I see there is to be a Drawing-room directly after 
Christmas, or at latest a few days after the New Year, and I must 
be presented. I intend to go up to town and to communicate with 
the proper people. I shall not put up with Peregrine and Everilda, 
but she shall introduce me. I ought to be presented on your 
appointment to the bishopric.” 

“ No, really, is that necessary? Will Her Majesty expect it ? ” 
the bishop stammered ; he was completely taken aback by this dis- 
concerting declaration. It was true he had himself been to Wind- 
sor : an announcement to the effect that ‘‘ Th6 Bishop of Croy- 
land, the Rt. Rev. Terence Garfoyle, D. D., had arrived at the 
Castle, had been introduced to Her Majesty’s presence by the Lord- 
in-waiting, and did homage on his appointment ; the Rt. Hon. 

A. B , M. P., being present as Secretary of State,” had 

duly appeared in the public prints ; but that his wife had anything 
to do with his official promotion, or any duties toward Her Majesty 
resulting from it, was a notion which had not yet entered into the 
bishop’s head. 

“Surely, my darling,” he nervously articulated, “it cannot 
matter to Her Majest}'' whether she sees you or not ; nor can it be 
pleasant to you to incur so much expense and trouble for nothing. 
For myself, I must remain here. I am far too busy to dance 
attendance upon Court ceremonials.” 

“ Oh, dear, no ! ” she replied; “ you are not expected to come up 
to town to look after me. I am thinking of going to-morrow. 
The miner upstairs is doing all right. I need a change of scene, 


236 


THE HUSBAND OP ONE WIFE 


and I feel I must have it at once. Bruce will go with me ; you 
must make shift with Shadrach for a while. Have him in to sing 
to you as you used to do.” 

“ Is it not a pity to take Bruce away from his tutor and his 
studies ? ” he suggested. 

“ Not at all,” she replied ; he is the wine of life to me. You 
have just been out for a run, inspecting parsonage-houses, preach- 
ing in village pulpits, and holding confirmations, or whatever 
things a bishop plays at when he has a fortnight out ; now it is my 
turn. I shall take Pye, and put up at Gridley’s Hotel. I shall be 
all right there, and Peregrine and Everilda are in town, so this is 
a good opportunity.” 

Hitherto Victoria had felt quite good and happy. None of the 
little artifices which she was prone to use to get her own way hurt 
her conscience ; she considered them all to be rendered requisite, 
excusable, or meritorious by the bishop’s professional prejudices 
and undoubted eccentricities of character. She was making him 
a most excellent wife. She had bathed and rejuvenated him in a 
flood of matrimonial bliss. She had conducted his establishment 
with cheerfulness and signal success. She had rendered herself 
popular in the neighborhood and admired in society, while remain- 
ing a devoted and careful mother to her boy, and a perfectly 
charming companion to himself. She had not flirted once ; not 
even when Brabazon-Farnaby came down to buy those horses. 
Everyone knows how nice it is to feel very good and to be very 
much beloved, and up till now this had been Victoria’s happy fate ; 
but somehow it had begun to pall. She was tired of it; she felt 
irritable and out of sorts, and more than half inclined to pick a 
quarrel, for the sake of the excitement of it, with her too monoto- 
nously loving lord. She had been debating inwardly between 
being presented at Court and going to tlie dentist’s, and had 
selected the former for obvious reasons. 

On hearing her abrupt announcement, Dr. Garfoyle was silent. 
Concern might be read in every line of his fine countenance ; its 
expression w^as simply pathetic. 

“Pray reconsider your decision as regards our boy, Victoria,” he 
presently said. “At least leave me Bruce ; it will be better for the 
boy than. taking him to a London hotel ; he has had too much of 


SOMETHING WRONG 


23,7 


that sort of life ; it will wofully interrupt bis studies, his tutor 
and I shall be poor company each for the other ; he is so happy 
here with Shadrach to share his out-door games ; and I suppose 
you would be gone a fortnight at most, and I should hold him as a 
hostage.” 

He smiled persuasively, but Victoria flushed with sudden 
anger. 

‘‘ So you consider Shadrach, your housekeeper’s son, a fit com- 
panion for my boy ! for Bruce, with his sparkling intelligence, his 
beauty, and his inbred habit of command. Can you not hear the 
difference between the resonance and purity of his intonations and 
the detestable twang of that vulgar lad ? Is it not plain to you 
that he inherits gifts and qualities of mind from a long race of 
ancestors, both on his father’s side and mine, w^hose powers always 
kept them in the front and made them certain to control and direct 
their fellow's ? His own father may have been unfortunate, and I 
may be but a colonial mother in your insular judgment, but you 
must at least be able to recognize that, with no trace of self-asser- 
tion, my boy possesses the quiet assumption of superiority of one 
meant to rank wdth all that is best and noblest in the land ; and 
you calmly select for his companion your servant’s son ! ” 

It was the first time that Victoria had attacked her husband, and 
unluckily she had chosen a subject which he felt to possess the 
importance of a vital principle. He grew significantly serious, and 
enquired almost sternly: 

‘‘ Have you forgotten Italy, Victoria, and what Bruce owes to 
this same boy ? He gave him life.” 

‘“He gave him life, he gave him'death,’ ” Victoria chanted sud- 
denly. “Have you never heard it said that the tw'O go together? 
You may be unaware of what I tell you, but that man upstairs, 
that miner — who by the way is either mad or a prophet — sent for 
me to-day, and warned me solemnly against any longer sanction- 
ing the intimacy I complain of. You know what he is like — his 
eyes quite wild, his manner that of a lunatic, or of a seer. That 
he had even seen the boys I did not know ; nor can I learn that 
Bruce has ever been up to his room, though Shadrach’s low-bred 
curiosity may no doubt have taken him there ; yet when I paid 
the man my daily visit, he urged on me to separate my boy from 


238 


THE HUSBAND OP ONE WIFE 


that other. ‘He gave him life, he gave him death’; the words 
were his. Folly it may be, but I have been warned.” 

“The man’s brain is affected; he has upset your nerves — that 
groping in the darkness of night in a strange pit between two 
explosions, expecting death every moment, has unhinged bis reason. 
Do not visit him again, my love, and for pity’s sake forget his rav- 
ings. Leave him to the trained nurse whom I have engaged. But 
about the association of Bruce with Shadrach, hear me a moment, 
with your wonted reasonableness. It strikes me forcibly that the 
gifts which Shadrach can briag your boy far exceed those which 
Bruce has it in his power to divide with him. Your boy may give 
to Shadrach — or to a succession of Shadrachs — what? Possibly 
better food than they would eat at home ; possibly better clothes 
or even better instruction (though this latter is doubtful in these 
days of popular education) ; in return for these paltry common 
goods, what has the vulgar lad brought to your child? Health 
and strength, keen interest in life ; the power of happy laughter, 
the doubling of enjoyment by the contagion of youthful energies. 
The rich boy gives the poor the purchase of his pence or of his 
pounds, the other gives himself; the very elixir of his buoyant life, 
the exuberance of his ardent, simple nature. Believe me, my wife, 
that, if indeed the debtor and creditor account is to be balanced, 
you must throw your boy’s life into the scales, and then tell me 
how it stands ! ” 

Victoria was silent and looked perfectly unconvinced. Manlike, 
her husband went on speaking, as though conviction ever came to 
woman yet by the stoning of inclination by argument. He entreated 
her to consider what the hands deserved which were stretched out 
to secure good for their own children, to protect their own children 
alone from the chances and risks which befell others ; to place them 
apart and to teach them to think of themselves as something 
superior and different to those around them. 

“The day will surely come when all these artificial barriers 
which you raise around your children must be thrown down,” he 
added ; “ and then you send forth into the world beings with hearts 
closed against the just claims of others ; beings taught to consider 
themselves and their families something quite different to all the 
rest of mankind, richer, or better born, or more carefully brought 


SOMETHING WRONG 


239 


up. It matters nothing what the gas has been by which the fam- 
ily balloon has been inflated ; there is little or nothing to choose 
between one poisonous gas of human selfishness and another. Do 
you see, Victoria ? ” 

“ No, I do not see, I hear. It will do for an address to parents 
on your next parochial visitation,” said Victoria with a little 
yawn. 

“ Well, and you shall help me preach it by example, my sweet 
wife, to every vicarage in this diocese,” Dr. Garfoyle exclaimed 
warmly, possessing himself of her indifferent fingers. “Above 
everything, teach your child from the very beginning to hold 
out helping hands to every little comrade ; to see in every other 
child a possible brother or sister ; so that when the day comes 
in which he goes forth into a world articulate with the groans of 
humanity, he may stand as a brother among men and women; as 
one who recognizes no artificial barricades of man’s erection, but 
who knows himself a denizen of his Father’s earth, surrounded by 
his Father’s children, whose rights are his rights, and whose claims 
are his own care. Until their purer hearts are warped and poisoned 
by our prejudices, children delight in a community of life with 
each other ; to share is as natural to them as to breathe, until we 
teach them ‘ This is yours, this is not your neighbor’s.’ Let us at 
least prove it, Victoria. It is not a narrow question, in the present 
state of society it is one of vital importance that our children should 
go forth furnished with this truly hospitable spirit ; that each one 
should be prepared to walk the earth truly as a brother among 
brothers. The whole fabric of society may in a few short decades, 
or even less, depend upon whether or not they have successfully 
imbibed this principle. Upon the education which their mothers 
give them, while they are still boys and girls, the solution of every 
social problem hangs.” 

“ The line must be drawn somewhere,” said Victoria moodily. 

“ Pray draw it at the universe then,” exclaimed her husband 
warmly. “You have no right to assign it narrower limits ; make 
it so wide that you cannot see it, draw a girdle round the earth and 
sea; that will do for the present; you may have to include some 
other planets by and by.” 

“And all this,” said Victoria, “grew out of my telling you that 


240 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


I meant to go to London to-morrow, and to take Bruce with 
me.” 

‘‘Forgive me, my darling,” he said penitently. “You started 
me on a favorite theme. But must you really go ? ” 

Then Victoria rose impatiently. 

“ Do you suppose,” she said, “ that I am utterly devoid of feel- 
ing? Do you imagine that I can stay here and endure indefinitely 
all that I have been expected to go through of late ? Do you im- 
agine that funerals with a ghastly row of coffins in front of me, 
and weeping widows on either side, suit me ? That 1 like my 
clothing wet with blood and tears? Do you imagine that I have 
no nerves, as my sister-in-law would doubtless inform you ? that 
the words of the funeral service and the sound of the dismal 
anthems which were sung at the graves are not still ringing in my 
ears ? For what do you take me ? ” 

“ For a saint, or an angel, or, better still, for a most heroic 
woman with a noble and courageous soul,” he said, getting up from 
his seat, and kneeling before her. 

Victoria brightened; she had relieved her feelings by all that she 
had said ; she had got her own way, and she felt happier and more 
leniently disposed toward her husband since she was to make her 
escape on the following day. 

“Shall I tell you what I know I am,” she answered, smiling once 
more, throwing back her pretty head with a bewitching gesture, and 
glancing down upon him provokingly as he still knelt in rapture 
at her feet. “ Women such as I am do not wear well as wives ; we 
are such stuff as sirens were supposed to be made of, who lured 
honest men to their destruction. Your lawn sleeves, my lord, have 
enfolded no saint such as you imagine, but simply a bundle of 
feminine contradiction.” 

“Perhaps I am the best judge of what I have gained,” he 
answered serenely. 

“ It may be so,” she said ; “ but, after all, I never think long about 
myself, but take myself and other people as they come and as they 
go ; only, if you will force the deadly vice of modern self-con- 
sciousness upon me by the introspective forms of your faith, I can 
easily tell you that I am a woman whose spirits are often as light 
as gossamer while her heart is as heavy as lead ; and further, 


SOMETHING WRONG 


241 


that I am a mother whose passionate love of her child has rendered 
her victorious over death and anguish ; moreover, that I detest 
mono, tony and that I loathe penury.” 

“ Where do I come in, my darling wife ? ” he asked, bending 
tenderly down to kiss her hands. 

“ Oh, you come in on Sundays, in a church service, as long as 
you please me, Terence.” 

“Ah, my love, do not jest,” he said gravely, rising from his 
position at her feet. “Life is too serious for sham joy, or assumed 
sorrow.” 

“ All the truth there is in life lies hidden beneath its shams,” she 
said. “Wisdom waits upon you now, my lord, in the garb of folly. 
She is peeping at you at this moment from beneath her cloak of 
motley ; you will recognize her footsteps when they are no longer 
heard in your house. If in this life it is true that all realizations 
are for him who waits, it is equally true that all that comes, comes 
too late. See^ I have a present for you. I ordered it up in town, 
and I have had it specially engraved ; ” and she produced a small 
jeweller’s box, wherein was a handsome ring in which a sard was 
set, which was engraven with two words only. They were these : 
“Too late.” “ Will you wear it for my sake while I am absent?” 
she said, slipping it on his finger, which through a lifetime had 
been hitherto unadorned by jewelled ornament. 

“ I will wear it for your sake,” he answered gravely. “ I admire 
the beauty of the stone, and I admire your taste in choosing it, but 
I shall always wish that you had not allowed your spirit of contra- 
diction to influence you in your choice of a motto ; still, it is 
characteristic of you, my beloved, and, as all that is yours is mine, 
I accept thankfully even your contradictions, and this ring with 
them.” 

“ It would be better to beat me for them,” she rejoined. 

“ But must you go ? We have hardly been four months mar- 
ried. I had hoped that you would not have left me for a year and 
a day, and now you go and take Bruce with you.” 

Of course she went. He felt that she was ill, that all this dismal 
scene had been too much for her sensitive nerves. He had hoped 
to prevail upon her to stay, but he resigned himself to suffer for 
her sake. To be sympathetically affected by her sorrows was to 
16 


242 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


taste the joy of bringing her consolation. To vibrate sorrowfully 
with her in her failings was to learn the lesson of the mediator ; 
the price that must be paid for the privilege of intimate human 
association was the purchase of the joy and glory of the lover’s 
union. What was all this, in fine, but to enter more deeply into 
the comprehension of the communion of spirits, which could not be 
known save by sharing the miseries of sinners. And, after all, the 
bishop was very busy, as busy as a bishop must be in these modern 
days. No need to enumerate his engrossing occupations, every- 
body knows them ; and, after all, Victoria would come back all tlie 
better for the change, and all would go on well as before ; so he 
mused and hoped and trusted. 

“The dear bishop is so apostolic, he really should never have 
married,” said one of the disaffected clergymen’s wives to another, 
about this period. “ Have you heard that Mrs. Garfoyle has posi- 
tively left him alone alreadyj and that she has gone up to town to 
be presented at Court ? ” 

“ He always does remind me so of St. Paul,” said the lady 
addressed, and she spoke as though she had quite recently enjoyed 
the privilege of an intimate personal acquaintance with the apostle 
to the Gentiles. 


CHAPTER XXI 

TO SEE THE QUEEN 

On Christmas Eve Dr. Garfoyle sat over his study fire alone. 
When he had married, in the previous July, he had pictured a 
very different Christmas to himself : a Christmas which should 
have seen him at least in possession of a complete home circle of 
his own ; whereon his fireside should have been brightened by 
Bruce’s delicious mirth, and beautified by Victoria’s radiant pres- 
ence. But now he was absolutely solitary. The weather was 
extremely rough, the wind moaned outside, rain was falling in tor- 
rents; no other sound was heard save the raging of the tempest, 
which seemed to increase in violence every hour. A hurricane 
was driving hard over land and sea, and in its thunders every other 


TO SEE THE QUEEN 


243 


sound or voice was lost. The room was in semi-darkness ; for 
after a hard day’s work the bishop was permitting himself a brief 
interval of repose before he turned to the many other pressing 
matters awaiting his attention. 

Victoria and her boy were still up in town ; but as the Queen’s 
Drawing-room was to be held on Tuesday the very last day of this 
the last month of the Old Year, Dr. Garfoyle was living in hopes 
of their returning without fail immediately after the anticipated 
ceremony. They had already been gone three weeks, and true to 
his conviction of duty, he had not even allowed himself the relaxa- 
tion of running up to town to visit them, during the interval. He 
had so lately entered upon the work of the diocese that he could 
not alford to be absent. The habits of self-discipline which had 
so long distinguished him still governed his actions. 

The storm increased : a stack of chimneys fell with a sound 
like a thunder-bolt in some distant part of the dwelling ; and 
streams of water began to pour through the ceiling of the room in 
which the bishop sat, where above the great bow-window the tiles 
had been stripped from the roof. The bishop rose to reconnoitre ; 
but at that instant another summons broke in upon his anxious 
revery. It canc^e from a hospital nurse, the one who had charge 
of the unfortunate miner who still lingered in a distant chamber 
up above. His injuries had apparently been slighter than those of 
many, but his brain had never recovered from the shock. Most of 
the men who had been injured in the explosion had so far recovered 
that they had returned to their work ; the graves of the dead 
were decorated weekly with flowers or boughs of green by the 
women who held them in affectionate remembrance, and the pit 
was again in working order, but the strange man whom the bishop 
had taken in still languished on the bed to which he had at first 
been carried. One complication had followed another, baffling 
medical skill ; brain-fever had supervened, and now the end was 
rapidly approaching. 

“ V^ill you come, my lord ? ” the woman said ; he has been mostly 
delirious all day. He is sensible now, but sinking fast. The doctor 
has just gone. He says that he is not likely to last an hour ; he 
is calling for you, sir. At the rate at which he is going on, he will 
wear himself out in a few minutes.” 


244 


THE HUSBAND OP ONE WIFE 


Have you ascertained that he has really no relations to send 
for ? ” Dr. Garfoyle asked. 

The nui'se shook her head. 

“ None that he wishes to see,” she replied. 

Dr. Garfoyle rose immediately and followed her up the stairs ; 
at the door of a distant room she paused. The candle which she 
carried was extinguished by the wind which smote down upon them 
through a broken skylight, and the rain poured in in torrents. 

“Leave me,” the bishop said; “I would rather be alone with him 
now.” 

“ You will take care he does not try to get up, my lord ? ” she said 
with professional caution; “ they are awfully strong just at the last, 
when their brains are in that excited condition.” 

The bishop bowed his head in assent, and entered the feebly 
lighted room. 

Dr. Garfoyle had already discovered that his strange patient had 
the temperament of a religious enthusiast. He had learned that the 
man had been a class-leader in a narrow community of Methodists 
in a distant part of the country, among a mining population. The 
scene of his ministrations had been in the dark depths of the col- 
lieries in which he had worked. He had collected the men around 
him by the light of their lanterns during their spare hour for 
dinner, or had addressed the loungers by the pit-bank on Sundays. 
His thin spare frame, gaunt haggard face, and penetrating eyes 
fronted the bishop as he stepped across the floor. The man’s head 
was remarkable, his aspect wild and fierce. He was unshaven and 
his black hair was long, his eyes looked as though they pierced 
through the. solid walls of matter which surrounded him, and they 
shone with a strange consuming fire. “ Fanatic ” was written on 
every line of his countenance. He raised liis hands with a gesture 
of authority as Dr. Garfoyle approached the bed. 

“ Bishop ! my lord ! ” he shouted, in a voice which might well 
have carried words of warning to his comrades as it rang along the 
galleries of the mine, “ I have sent for j^^ou ! I have a message to 
you ! My soul is already well-nigh delivered ; it is walking on the 
wings of the wind, poised above time and place. My eyes already 
see farther than your sight can reach, my ears hear words that were 
never uttered in mortal ears ! I see the sins of men and women, 


TO SEE THE QUEEN 


245 


crawling and creeping on the earth, vile, slimy monsters poisoning 
them with their deadly venom, and leaving them to drop down into 
destruction. I see all the higli places of the earth brought low, all 
the great ones diminished.” 

“ Calm yourself, my friend,” said Dr. .Garfoyle, laying his own 
hand with a calm, strong pressure upon the bed coverings. 

The dying man gasped for breath, seemed revived by the bishop’s 
touch as by a fresh spring breeze, and, after a restful pause, con- 
tinued in a quieter tone of voice : 

‘‘ Bishop, it was to the miners that Christ went when he 
‘ descended into hell ’ to visit ‘ the spirits in prison.’ He, too, trod 
the bowels of the earth ! In the mines I have met Him. When I 
descended into the darkness, I found that He was there also; when 
I was buried alive there. He talked with me, face to face, as a man 
speaks with his brother. There He too was black, yet comely.” 

“Forget the darkness now, my friend. He who has been ‘ lifted 
up ’ draws you up unto Himself, into His light.” 

There was a moment’s pause of es^haustion. The miner’s fail- 
ing breath came and went with painful rapidity. The imagery of 
Scripture alone had, it was evident, provided dramatic expression 
for this untutored but poetic nature, as is so often the case with 
such unlettered prophets. 

Presently he spoke again, more feebly : 

“I am in the light now; I am in a beautiful dwelling-place. 
Your palace walls are wonderful, my lord, they are made of precious 
stones, the onyx and the chrysoprase are there, the sardius and the 
jacinth ; but listen, this is what I see : All over the shining surface 
of the jewelled walls I read these words, cut and engraven in the 
stone, and set with gold, ‘ Too late ! Too late ! ’ ” 

The bishop started; on the finger of the hand with which he 
laid a firm pressure on the sufferer’s hand upon the bed shone Vic- 
toria’s ring, witli its enigmatical inscription ; but he would have 
held it impossible that the miner’s eyes could have diciphered the 
minute old English characters in which the words were cut, had 
they not, moreover, been engraved upon the under side and not 
upon the surface of the ring. 

Dr. Garfoyle was, however, never superstitiously inclined; he 
noted it as a passing coincidence, and paid no more heed to the 


246 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


words. But the dying man continued again, with a change of 
dramatic expression, in so far as the aid of corporeal expression 
could be permitted to one unable to raise himself up. This time 
he was evidently in imagination again in the mine. Yet his 
thoughts took shape in great measure also from the circumstances 
immediately surrounding him. 

The storm was raging still, the rain deluging the passage outside 
his door through the skylight, broken by falling tiles ; to his fancy 
all this suggested that the mine was being flooded, but with a rapid 
change he turned to Dr. Garfoyle. 

“Bishop,” he said, “ your walls are sinking in, your house is 
undermined; wherever you place your foot the water rises beneath 
your tread;, the floodgates of heaven are opened, your ark is no 
place of safety, the waters roar beneath it. Death and destruction 
are abroad. Death takes me with the Old Year ; it will re-enter 
your dwelling when you least look for it. Its return is not far off. 
I see it ! I know it to be not mine only.” 

Again there was silence; the dying man’s eyes closed, and Dr. 
Garfoyle, feeling that the end was rapidly approaching, raised his 
clear, calm voice in consolatory utterances, or words of invocation, 
couched in the old biblical language which was the only speech of 
the miner’s soul. 

Once more the dying man’s eyes unclosed; this time they were 
fixed in a long and tender gaze of pathetic affection and penetrat- 
ing sympathy upon Dr. Garfoyle’s face. 

“ Dear brother,” he said, clasping the bishop’s hand in both his 
own, “ remember in the days to come that I shall repay 5^our care ; 
remember that I wait for the child that I may guard him for you 
— that I shall keep him safely for you till you come for him again. 
The time will be short. And give my message to my mates down 
below; tell them — He descended into Hades, the place of darkness, 
the pit. In the darkness of the mine I saw Him, I met Him. Tell 
them He knows the miners. He knows them. He chooses them — 
and me ! ” 

When Dr. Garfoyle left the room he had himself closed the 
sightless eyes and composed the worn-out body, and upon his own 
face there shone only the light of a serene exaltation. 

The miner was buried by the bishop himself on the following 


TO SEE THE QUEEN 


247 


Saturday. The funeral sermon was also preached by him, not in the 
cathedral church, but in the little tin tabernacle set up in the midst 
of the mining district ; but the bishop felt himself to be but the 
medium by whose lips the departed man delivered his own mes- 
sage to his brethren. 

Of the other sentences which fell from those dying lips Dr. Gar- 
foyle never spoke to any human being. They were to be dis- 
missed as the wanderings of a weakened brain, not to be dwelt 
upon b}’’ any wise man; or if indeed the suggestion which 
prompted them was to be souglit, it was easy to imagine that the 
constantly expected death of the woman Pettit, whose room was 
next to that which had been occupied by the miner, was in itself 
sufficient to have dictated his wild words. At the same time. Dr. 
Garfoyle recognized that it was not witliout the limits of his expe- 
rience that the perceptions of one already on the verge of deliver- 
ance from mortal bonds should fasten upon things beyond his 
own present appreliension. Therefore he buried the matter in the 
lucid depths of his own tliouglit, unforgotten there to lie, but 
never to be permitted to rise to the surface. 

The miner had died on Christmas Eve. On Saturday, the 28th, 
he was buried. On the 29th, Sunday, the bishop addressed the pit 
people, who crowded to hear him, mindful of his recent devotion to 
their welfare, and of his sympathy with their misfortunes. And on 
the 31st he went up to town. That afternoon Victoria was to 
appear at the Drawing-room ; on the following Sunday the bishop 
was to preach at St. Paul’s, and he had various other engagements 
which would positively necessitate his presence in town up to about 
the seventh or eighth day of the month ; the moment that these 
were over he hoped to return home with Victoria and Bruce. 

Dr. Garfoyle’s business was greatly due to the embarrassed con- 
dition of his finances, owing to the enormous sums which his wife 
had disbursed. He found it would be absolutely necessary for him, 
if he was to clear up all liabilities, and to start afresh with their 
return home in the New Year, to convert the greater part of his 
private fortune into available funds. He was prepared to take 
this step, and had made arrangements to carry it into effect during 
his stay in town. He could not breathe with the millstone of debt 
which his wife had hung about his neck. He had deliberately deter- 


248 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


mined to rid himself of it by taking heroic and immediate measures ; 
but, once cleared, he had adopted an absolute and irrevocable 
decision that, come what might, he would never again be over- 
taken by a similar contingency. To permit such a continued line 
of action would, in his estimate, have been in himself a greater sin 
than in Victoria. She must submit to his will in the matter, and 
she should. How, exactly, he was going to compel her acquiescence 
he might not have been able to say as yet; he must clear up all old 
and outstanding scores first — his man of business had been com- 
municated with to that effect; afterward, he must make Victoria 
comprehend that he intended to be obeyed. His wife was so incal- 
culable, she was so charmingly impromptu in all her actions, that it 
saved him the trouble of thinking beforehand what he was to say, 
or hiow he was to set about it, because it was obviously futile to 
invent conversations when you can have no conception of the motives 
which are likely to govern the other party’s replies. Dr. Garfoyle 
was aware that, owing to his consistency, the movements of his own 
mind might well prove monotonous ; he was equally sensible of the 
element of attraction in the unexpectedness of his wife’s mental 
processes. Another sort of man might have been irritated by this 
characteristic in his wife, to Dr. Garfoyle it still offered the charm 
of novelty; moreover, it saved time and trouble in pre-considera- 
tion, and forced a corresponding originality upon the time-worn 
husband personally. 

Victoria should return with him and with her boy, within a week, 
to Croyland; Victoria should submit to his dictation in matters of 
expenditure and display ; upon these two points the bishop had 
come to an irrevocable decision. 

On Tuesday Dr. Garfoyle went up to town, and the joy of 
anticipation went with him. At last he found himself actually on 
his way to join his wife and her darling boy. He was yearning to 
fold them both in his arms. He seemed to himself to have lived 
with the thought of this hour of reunion never out of his thoughts 
since Victoria had left him. 

When he reached the hotel his pulses were agitated as no scene 
of tragic significance had had power to agitate them. When 
he entered the drawing-room, which, although an hotel room, 
Victoria had impressed, as she did every place she inhabited, 


TO SEE THE QUEEN 


249 


entirely with the influence of her own personality, he found Bruce 
eagerly waiting for him upon the threshold. The boy sprang into 
his arms. 

“ Oh, father, I am so glad ! I am quite mad with joy because 
you are come. I have come to the ‘ collusion ’ that we sha’n’t 
never go away from you any more.” 

“ Where is your mother, my darling boy ? ” 

‘‘ She is dressing, father. She is awfully grand, but the Queen 
^ill let you put so little on when you go to see her that I’m sure 
she will catch cold.” 

At this moment Pye put in her head. 

“Mrs. Garfoyle would like to see you, my lord, if you will come 
into the next room. The temperature of this drawing-room is so 
low that she dare not come in here.” 

At this remark Bruce’s bright little face sparkled with fun in 
every line. 

“ If that is all I’ll soon get it up, you can tell mother ; ” then, seiz- 
ing the thermometer which Mrs. Pye bad dismally consulted, and 
snatching up a fat lazy cat belonging to the house, which lay upon 
the foot of the sofa, he placed the thermometer beneath her and 
carefully covered up both with a fur cloak. 

“ Now, father,” he said, as the bishop vanished, “5^011 can tell 
mother to come in here and show herself as soon as she likes ; the 
cat and the thermometer between them will soon get up the right 
temperature.” 

Victoria received her husband, standing in a magnificent court- 
dress, at the end of a vast room. Two women with pins in their 
mouths knelt at her feet on the floor. A hair-dresser was putting 
up his apparatus in the dressing-room ; and Mrs. Pye stood, as 
Bruce said, by the table, “ looking consulted.” It was splendid, 
but chilling ; nevertheless, her smile was sweet enough to convey 
a million meanings, and though he could not approach the lovely 
picture, he could promise himself a postponed enjoyment of its 
perfections. He noted that Victoria was looking brilliantly young 
and fresh, and consoled himself by the assurance that there could 
be now no possible cause for her requiring any remedial absence 
from home. She blew him a tiny kiss with the tips of her gloved 
fingers, weighted with a yet more delicious smile ; he stumbled 


250 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


over the hair-dresser on the threshold of the apartment, and 
returned to the drawing-room to receive Lady Peregrine Golden- 
our, equally magnificent and entirely unattractive, save — it was to 
be hoped — to her own lord and master, who scrambled in after her, 
holding up her train for her. Then the two ladies and Sir Peregrine 
departed, and the bishop observed, as he assisted at their installa- 
tion in their carriage, that it was his own, or that it was, at any 
rate, the one which had been his own. He noted that it was com- 
pletely renovated ; remembered that Victoria had requested him 
to send it up to town for her sister-in-law’s use ; and hopefully 
concluded that, after all, the purchase had been suitably arranged. 
Tlien he returned to pass the intervening hours between his wife’s 
departure and return in the company of the boy whom he so loved. 

His wife’s absence was long, and Dr. Garfoyle had abundant 
leisure to notice that Bruce had lost flesh and color in town; nor 
was the child long in confiding to his step-father’s sympathetic 
ears his longing to return to the freedom of his home. 

There’s nothing to do here, father, but to be shut up in a bed- 
room with Pye while mother is out, and Pve outgrown Pye ; I 
should think anyone would by when they were in their ninth year. 
She expects me to count how many four-wheelers and hansoms go 
by in an hour ; now, can she want to know that ? When I come 
home I’m going to learn to ride. Mr. Farnaby has bought me a 
pony, because mamma couldn’t go to the stables where it was living. 
It’s going to be sent down to-morrow, and I shall give Shadrach 
turns too ; he says his father had six horses, besides a donkey and 
a lot of cows, so he was ever so much richer than mine, Mrs. Pye 
says.” 

The boy was still running on with happy chatter, seated on the 
arm of the bishop’s chair, when soon after seven o’clock the two 
ladies and Sir Peregrine returned. They came in talking eagerly, 
and Victoria was gay and excited. The bishop had fondly imagined 
that they would have dined together, and that thus they might 
have spent the hours of the departing year, and the first moments 
of the new one. He had even trusted that his wife might not be 
too fatigued to spend the last hour of this their first year together 
by his side at the midnight service, in some neighboring church. 
It seemed that he was to be again disappointed. 


TO SEE THE QUEEN 


251 


Sir Peregrine and Lady Golden our had been invited to remain 
to an eight o’clock dinner; two or three other guests were expected 
by Victoria, and Mr. Brabazon-Farnaby, who was still (or was it 
again ?) in town among them, was of that number. 

“Would the Sultan never claim that man?” Lady Peregrine 
had already enquired of her husband, “ or did he always let him 
go ? It was unheard-of ! ” 

However, there he was. And after the dinner was over it 
appeared that all the little party present, except the bishop himself, 
were to adjourn to a friend’s house for a ball, where they were to 
dance the old year out and the new one in, in company. 

Dr. Garfoyle was surprised and disconcerted. Victoria had long 
known that he was coming on that day; could she not have con- 
sulted his pleasure as well as her own ? He was seeking the kindly 
excuse which invariably followed question of her conduct in his 
mind, when she sent for him to her room, where she and Pye 
together were changing her court-dress for one more convenient 
for a dance. She told him hastily that, as she could not hope to 
get away till four in the morning, and as she should be with the 
Peregrine Goldenours, she had arranged to return to their house to 
sleep. 

“ I have never left Bruce for a single night since we came up to 
town, it makes him so happy to sleep in my room,” she explained ; 
“ but now that you are here you will take care of him, and I can go 
off quite at ease about him. There he is, you see, in his little bed 
in the corner fast asleep already, dear child. But in six or seven 
days,” she added, with a lovely smile which atoned to him for 
much, “ we will all go home together. Shall we not be happy?” 

“ I hope so,” he answered briefly, in acknowledgment of this 
sugar-plum. 

What could he say more? For Pye appeared to be attached to 
her lady by pins, fastened by combs, and united by artificial 
flowers. Moreover Victoria was late, Everilda Goldenour and her 
Imsband were calling impatiently, and the rest of the party were 
displaying civil annoyance at the delay. 

The bishop sat alone over the drawing-room fire. Bruce was 
sleeping in the next room. Presently his meditations were inter- 
rupted by a discreet knock at the door, and the manager of the 


252 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


hotel entered with an apology. Relaxing his features by a stiff 
smile he laid before the bishop a sheaf of papers which, he 
explained, contained a record of Mrs. Garfoyle’s account with tlie 
establishment. Gridley’s was not a company, as is the case nowa- 
days with most big hotels, but a well-known, highly select, and 
most expensive resort for people who were all that they should be. 
The position which Gridley’s held was rather comparable to that 
of the family banker ; and, true to their reputation, it seemed that 
they had permitted Mrs. Garfoyle to run up as long an account as 
she chose, on the score of the bishop’s position, not only for the 
ordinary expenses of board and lodging, but also in respect of very 
considerable sums disbursed by them on her personal responsibility. 

“ Under the circumstances,” the manager explained, “ the Bureau 
had indeed been happy to consult Mrs. Garfoyle’s convenience ; 
but she had requested them, now that his lordship had come up to 
town, to lay these documents before him.” Having thus delivered 
himself of this carefully prepared speech, the polite gentleman of 
the hotel bowed and withdrew, leaving Dr. Garfoyle to digest the 
paper feast spread before him as best he might. 

The next two hours were spent by the bishop in a state of ever- 
growing astonishment and dismay. His education was certainly 
progressing rapidly. He had no doubt heard, or had read in news- 
paper reports and other sources of miscellaneous information, of 
ladies who could dance through fortunes just as men might wager 
estates at the gaming-table or squander thousands upon racing 
events ; but he had always had too much to do to attend to this 
particular development of human weakness. The person — be it man 
or woman — who perpetrated such follies, he had, moreover, never 
expected to meet in the society which he was in the habit of fre- 
quenting. Now and then, it is true, it had been Dr. Garfoyle’s 
fate as a college dean or lecturer to come across some half-fledged 
youth, stories of whose mad extravagance were circulated among 
the authorities at college meetings; but then the young felloAV had 
speedily had to droop his silly head and to disappear as he had 
come. 

Older men, too, he could easily recall, who had stupidly or 
viciously muddled away comfortable fortunes ; but a woman who 
danced through thousands as children dance on the edge of sea 


TO SEE THE QUEEN 


253 


waves, splashing the water to riglit and to left, merely to make it 
fly, from sheer love of enjoyment, or heightening of sensation, he 
had scarcely expected to discover among the decorous wives and 
maidens of his social set. Yet here was his own wife flinging 
money away in utter lavishness of spending, for the mere love of 
buying, simply in order to gratify the passion of possession. The 
very room in which he sat bore evidence against her. In his eyes 
it almost resembled a bazaar, so full was it of objects of taste, of 
meretricious value. For the brief time that she was to occupy 
it, it appeared, from the accounts before him, that Victoria had 
actually refurnished it with curtains, tapestries, carpets, and 
lounges ; not to mention the ornaments displayed on every side. 
The same had also been done in her other rooms ; and as to the 
flowers she had ordered, as Dr. Garfoyle glanced at the items of 
the florist’s bill he reflected that no more artificial product need be 
sought on earth than these natural gifts of summer and of sunshine, 
when misrepresented by the costly productions of the florist’s 
establishment. What an abuse of the good gifts of Heaven was 
here in this degradation of lovely blossoms to the service of van- 
ity and folly. Then there was a really remarkable confectioner’s 
account for fondants, bon-bons, and gateaux of every description ; 
things with the most modern French designations such as one must 
be either a Parisian of the hour, or a professed artist in sugar, to 
be able so much as to decipher. Was it possible that Bruce had 
really been fed upon all these extortionate dainties ? No wonder 
he looked much the worse for the regimen ! 

Victoria had certainly provided a pleasant welcome and a charm- 
ing occupation for her devoted husband in the consideration of 
these precious documents. They might almost be regarded as her 
diary, so minutely did they furnish a record of her pursuits and 
enjoyments since she left home to restore her nerves by change of 
scene in London society. For a second it struck him to fancy how 
oddly it would look to see a paragraph in the daily papers announc- 
ing that ‘‘the Bishop of Croyland would no longer be responsible 
for his wife’s debts.” He could not be indignant with one so inex- 
pressibly dear to him, but the strict morality which governed his 
character forbade him to subordinate what he recognized as an 
immediate duty to any cowardly reluctance of the affections. 


254 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


If he could have seen all the convicting bills before him at once, 
it would have been a great relief to the bishop’s mind j but, in the 
uncertainty of the precise sum total of Victoria’s expenditure, he 
had not even the distraction of arithmetic to relieve the disturbance 
of his feelings. The amount represented by his wife’s outlay during 
three weeks’ stay at Gridley’s would, in his estimation, have been 
sufficient to maintain the whole establishment at Croyland for a year. 
He noticed — now that he was forced to a narrow consideration of 
the subject through the hours of this melancholy evening of the 
Old Year, with no clerical matters to divert his attention — that 
Victoria’s milliner’s bills and other matters of personal expenditure 
were not included in the sheaf which he held ; and what the amount 
of those awful documents might be baffled his horrified conjecture. 
Had he not seen her magnificence when she went to pay her 
respects to her Sovereign ? Had he not again beheld her whiter 
but even more wonderful, when, shining and sparkling in satin, 
laces, and diamonds, she had followed Lady Goldenour down the 
steps to her carriage and had driven off for the rest of the night ? 

In his anxiety to consult her pleasure in all things Dr. Garfoyle 
had paid what he felt to be a very considerable sum into his banker’s, 
to his wife’s account, when she left him for town. His eyes now 
fell upon her check-book: it was flung carelessly upon the table, 
as though on purpose to attract his attention ; no need to wait to 
satisfy himself on that score : the amount had been overdrawn in 
ten days. To all this must be added, as he privately knew, his 
own almsgiving both public and private, always the largest sum he 
disbursed; and the enormous claims which had had to be met 
upon his appointment to the bishopric, of which he would touch 
none of the emoluments till the close of the first year of office. 

Poor child, she had been held in so long ! Through all the nar- 
rowly restricted years of her widowhood had she not been doled 
out a grudging and insufficient pittance by her own and her first 
husband’s family? Was it to be wondered at if, with almost 
childish joy in the pleasure of what had seemed to her unlimited 
present wealth, with Bruce’s future unexpectedly secured witli the 
assurance of a handsome inheritance, she had cast wisdom to the 
winds ? Happily, by the sacrifice of his private fortune he could 
yet retrieve the position ; and, by every duty which he owed to 


TO SEE THE QUEEN 


255 


God and man, she should henceforth be guided by him in this 
matter ! 

The bishop had reached the point wherein an august austerity 
was mingling with an unrestricted tenderness in the thought of 
Victoria’s sweet personality, when all the bells broke forth from 
all the churches round ; he thrust the papers into a drawer and 
went out, taking his way to a midnight service. So the husband 
prayed, the wife danced, and the child slept, while the bells rang 
another Old Year out and another New Year in. 

As the bishop regained his wife’s drawing-room the clock struck 
one, and at that instant the electric lights were extinguished ; but 
candles had been placed upon the table, evidently in view of that 
emergency, and the fire yet smouldered in the grate. As he sat 
down before it, his eye fell upon a scrap of paper lying on the rug 
at his feet. He thought it must be one of the bills which he had 
dropped ; but, on picking it up and unfolding it, it proved to be a 
vulgar production of the ordinary type of anonymous letter directed 
in an unknown hand to himself ; in which the writer sought to stir 
up mischief by misrepresenting the visits of Mr. Brabazon-Farnaby 
to Mrs. Garfoyle during her stay in the hotel. After a moment’s 
consideration Dr. Garfoyle took the thing in the tongs and thrust 
it into the fire, washed his hands after having inadvertently 
touched it, and betook himself to rest in Bruce’s room. 

The sight of the boy’s pure face and lovely brow, as he lay sleep- 
ing upon his pillow, imaged for him the brightness of the Eternal 
Child. And praying inly, as he blessed and kissed the boy, for that 
perfect harmony of spirit which the discords of the outer life might 
seek to disturb in vain, his uplifted soul gathered down upon itself 
the strength of a flawless serenity. Escaping thus from the fatigues 
of an outer world agitated by the distractions of change and 
chance, the bishop thus had access to an ideal state, postponed to no 
distant paradise, but realized immediately as a present and limit- 
less expansion of personal fruition in an ever-growing union with 
the Divine Spirit. 


256 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE ^VIFE 


CHAPTER XXII 

AN UNEXPECTED MOVE 

Victoria Garfoyle had distinctly told her husband that it 
would not be of the least use for him to call for her at Sir Peregrine 
Goldenour’s on the morning after the ball — New Year’s Day. She 
declared that she should be so fatigued from all her exertions on 
the previous day that she should certainly be extremely late in get- 
ting up; but to console him she had promised to return to the 
hotel at latest by two o’clock. Until he had seen her, and had 
poured out all that he had in his mind and heart to her, Dr. Gar- 
foyle felt quite unable to devote his attention to any of the busi- 
ness which awaited him. The critical interview with her must take 
place first. What if she refused to hear him ? Yet in spite of this 
recurring suggestion, he found himself counting the hours like a 
schoolboy, so anxious was he for the moment when the joy of her 
return should take the place of the night of his deprivation. 
Moreover, it was Saturday, and the 1st of January and a public 
holiday, so that he could scarcely have done his business had he 
been so minded. Mentally he postponed it to Monday, since he 
was to preach at St. Paul’s on the Sunday morning. To while 
away the empty hours and to please the child, he took Bruce to the 
Zoological Gardens, returning only at the time at which he expected 
to receive Victoria. 

But when Dr. Garfoyle re-entered the hotel, he found that a 
telegram had been waiting for an hour, in which Victoria informed 
him that she had already started for Croyland by the 10.30 train. 
With the paper in his hand he turned into his wife’s room ; there 
he found the woman Pye — whom he secretly suspected of having 
indited the anonymous communication of the night before — upon 
her knees immersed in packing; and the whole room was a scene 
of disorder and confusion. 


AN UNEXPECTED MOYE 


257 


“ Mrs. Garfoyle was so done up, sir, that she said she could not 
remain in London. She onh" slept for three hours, and then had 
some coffee, and set off in a cab at ten o’clock. She longed to be 
in the country. She said she needed quiet ; but she preferred to 
send you a telegram herself from the station. She wished me to 
come here and pack her things, and I was to follow her by an 
afternoon train — and I was to be sure to enquire did you wish for 
Master Bruce to stop with you, or to come home with me ? She 
said you would give your instructions as to that.” 

“ I wish Master Bruce to return with you to his mother,” said 
the bishop, with an unshaken dignity baffling to the woman’s 
curiosity. 

“ Have you no message, my lord, to Mrs. Garfoyle ? ” 

But the bishop left the room, absolutely as though no voice had 
spoken. 

“ So his sweet wife’s conscience pricked her for her extravagance, 
and she was afraid to meet him ! ” That was how he tenderly 
accounted for her flight. 

For a whole week the bishop was forcibly detained in town. 
He found it, of course, impossible to get his work done in the time 
he desired. Solicitors and stock -brokers were not easily hurried, 
and his inclinations counted for nothing. At length he felt that 
his financial arrangements could be concluded from Croyland, and 
thither he immediately hastened. During the interval he had 
written to Victoria letters in which his determination to begin 
the Hew Year by an economical readjustment of their way of liv- 
ing plainly showed itself, mingling with words of the warmest 
affection. Of these letters Victoria took not the slightest notice. 
Not one line did her longing husband receive from her ; he was 
utterly at a loss to know what to make of it ; but Bruce wrote a 
couple of childish compositions, in which he told of the arrival of 
the new pony, and reported that his mother was ‘‘ quite well,” and 
dwelt upon his joy in returning to his home. 

Croyland Court, the bishop’s dwelling, was a fine stone-built 
mansion standing in wooded grounds upon the slope of the hill on 
which the cathedral had been admirably placed ; as a site, its 
position was nearly perfect. The bishop’s mansion and the solidly 
built houses of other church dignitaries were grouped on the side 
17 


258 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


of Oroyland hill, just below the level of the cathedral. Behind, in 
the distance, rose other and higher ranges of hills ; beneath them 
the houses of the town sent their smoke upward, and were packed 
more and more closely together till, at the bottom of the valley, a 
small river, Croyle, pursued its track to the sea. The most busy 
and populous part of the manufacturing centre lay half-concealed 
in the valley; while the pit villages were at a distance of some 
three or four miles from the town. 

When the boy Bruce first beheld the stately home to which he 
was brought, it took possession of his childish fancy as grand 
enough to have grown out of a fairy-tale. He realized that there 
was something about his new home, though he could not have told 
what it was, which distinguished it from every home which he had 
ever owned before ; even from the beautiful haunts which his 
mother used to frequent in the south of France. As he roamed, 
with Shadrach for a companion, through the gardens, the parklike 
meadows, and wooded enclosures which immediately surrounded 
Croyland Court, during all the later days of the summer and 
autumn of the year which had just run out its course ; as he 
learned to climb the hills, and to manage his boat on the river, the 
boy grew to love the place well. He had a tender, inborn passion 
for nature in his guileless heart, which led him keenly to rejoice in 
all her varying sights and sounds ; and when he and Shadrach had 
done running races and climbing trees, pursuing insects, birds, or 
blossoms, or disporting themselves in boyish fashion over the soft 
lawns of their new playground, Bruce would stretch himself upon 
the turf, looking up at the distant range of undulating hills, and 
put his fair head sideways, so as to see the brilliant coloring, or the 
hazy outlines of the landscape from a different angle of vision, in 
order thus to restore the freshness of impression impaired by daily 
observation. He never wearied of the view either of the house and 
grounds or of the distant country ; the shadows which flitted over 
the ivy-grown walls of the gray stone house varied from hour to 
hour of the day. The clouds that chased each other across the 
sky, and sometimes came down upon the hill-tops, were never alike, 
and the sunshine never dispersed them twice in the same fantastic 
forms, but lighted up the whole country with ever varying smiles. 
In the early morning hours the land would be wrapped in silvery 


AN UNEXPECTED MOVE 


259 


mist; later on the air became so thin and clear that the hoy’s keen 
eyesight could detect the distant points of light where the shafts 
of rising sunlight caught the tiny panes of glass in the windows of 
some shepherd’s hut upon the hills, making them flash back lights 
like signals to watching eyes below. Bruce never wearied of gaz- 
ing at his beautiful home, and already in six short months he had 
grown to love it with a love mixed with awe and wonder, and 
mingled with the strange feeling that every tree and flower and 
blade of grass had an individual personality of its own, a fraction 
of conscious life which it shared with his. 

On the day on which Dr. Garfoyle was to return all the distance 
was bathed in bright wintry sunshine, the air was crisp with snow 
crystals, and was even more transparent than usual, for the direc- 
tion of the wind carried the smoke of Croyland in the opposite 
direction. The wintry sunbeams lit up sparkling masses of pure 
white snow, supported by the outspread arms of four majestic 
cedar-trees which stood upon the lawn, fronting the picturesque 
pile of building. Bruce ran down to the lower lodge, and climbing 
into the cab which brought his step-father, drove up to the front 
entrance with him. 

Victoria came out beneath the portico to greet her husband and 
son. But what was the change in her ? She was clad in clinging 
black robes; there was not an atom of color visible anywhere 
about her, her white collar and cuffs demurely outlined the slender 
proportions of her elegant figure, and the only ornament to be seen 
upon the black expanse of her robe was a large cross in beaten 
silver, which hung by a silver chain at her side ; in her hand she 
carried a black worsted stocking of Bruce’s, which she was appar- 
ently darning. No servants came to the door to receive him; the 
cabman was directed by Mrs. Garfoyle to bring in the things, was 
paid and dismissed. Holding out her hands to her boy Victoria 
danced with him all about the hall, by a series of graceful evolu- 
tions evading her husband’s proffered salute ; laughingly she 
retreated till she reached the door of the morning-room. There 
she disappeared with Bruce, but the bishop followed them, and 
found that she had apparently taken possession of the room for her 
own special occupation. He was surprised to see that all the 
hric-d-hrac which had lately filled it had vanished. At present its 


260 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


arrangements were severe in their simplicity. A sewing-machine 
stood upon the table, and a suit of Bruce’s, half cut out, betrayed 
his wife’s apparent occupation when disturbed by his arrival. He 
also noticed that the pictures with which she had lavishly adorned 
the walls had given place to lithographs, or inexpensive prints of 
religious subjects from galleries of foreign art, or of the Arundel 
Society’s publications. 

‘‘Bruce,” his mother now said, addressing the boy, “run away to 
the housekeeper’s room; Shadrach is waiting for you there, he has 
something to show you — I’ve not the least notion that he has,” 
she said, speaking for the first time to her husband ; “ but one boy 
always has something to show another, so it will do for an excuse. 
Pray, Mr. Bishop, is this right, now ? ” she said, stepping back and 
indicating by a pretty gesture first the room and then her own 
novel investiture. “ How, am I good ? How, am I proper ? How, 
am I doing my duty in ‘ that state and condition, etc., to which it 
has pleased you to call me ? ’ Is this how you admire me ? Seven- 
pence a yard was the precise cost of this black serge gown. See, I 
wear no ornaments, and this cross is not even of gold. I am think- 
ing of becoming a Roman Catholic : I’ve often thought of it before. 
Look at the socks I am knitting, will you appropriate them ? How 
many bishops’ wives, do you suppose, are capable of cutting out 
and making suits for their own big boys of eight, and finishing 
them in true tailor style ? ” (As a matter of fact they were not 
finished, and Victoria had commenced them a year and a half ago, 
when she was living in lodgings ; but as a statement for effect it 
was true enough, no doubt she could have done it had she wished.) 
The bishop tried to interpose the embrace for which he was wait- 
ing ; but she would not permit it. “Ho,” she said, “I will not 
allow it, and you shall not utter a word till you have heard what 
I have to say. There is no need for you to speak ; everything 
that you wished is done already. You determined that I should 
be reformed, well, I am reformed ; you insist upon economy in 
dress, I am already shabby and penurious ; you will have it that I 
should set an example to all the curates’ wives in the diocese, 
behold what an example I set ! you deprecate luxury in my sur- 
roundings, I work a sewing-machine upon a kitchen table, and have 
not a single picture on the walls of the drawing-room, only a couple 


AN UNEXPECTED MOVE 


261 


of framed texts ; you can go upstairs and see for yourself. Like- 
wise, if you turn into the dining-room, you will observe plain ugli- 
ness in every detail ; all the gold and silver, all the plate and glass 
have gone : nothing beautiful and wicked remains behind — unless, 
indeed, it be myself ! ” 

At this point the bishop, transported with love and admiration, 
succeeded in arresting the stream of mocking words. But she soon 
went on : 

‘‘You wish me to take a leading part in the charities of the 
diocese, so perhaps it may please you to know that the ‘Society of 
Modest Maidens ’ meet here to-morrow. ‘ Good girls,’ you know. 
They will swing and play at skipping-rope, decorously, beneath 
your study windows from the hours of two to six. I hope that you 
have no work on hand which they can interfere with ; but if you 
have, you will rejoice to be disturbed in their cause, I have no 
doubt. On the following Tuesday the same ropes will be used and 
the same games will be plaj^ed, with the addition of ‘ Aunt Sally’ 
and ‘Kiss-in-the-ring,’ by the ‘Giddy Girls’ Amendment Mission’ ; 
and so successful have been the efforts of this charity that I am 
promised that you will really see no difference between the two 
sets of young persons ! On Wednesday afternoon the wives of the 
beneficed clergy will hold a working-party in tliis room, to make 
surplices for their choirs ; and on Thursday the curates’ wives will 
meet in the stone parlor to knit gray worsted socks for their own 
or others’ husbands and children. On Friday — let me see what it 
is on Friday, I forget, I must consult my tablets — oh ! the ‘ Society 
of Superannuated Sextons.’ They will be suitably addressed by 
the cemetery chaplain, the old man who has already buried upward 
of thirty-two thousand people, all off his own book; who, by the 
way, is never in a hurry, always quite cheerful, never takes a holi- 
day, and has got eighteen sons and daughters of his own. See 
how well I have informed myself, and how admirably I have worked 
the diocese while you have been away ! I can tell you at once, 
Terence, that the best man that the diocese contains — next to your- 
self of course — is that cemetery chaplain.” 

“ Far beyond me, my love ; it’s a case of ‘ last shall be first ’ I 
doubt not ; but pray continue your category.” 

“ Well, then ; on Saturday the clergy widows and orphans are to 


262 


THE HUSBAND OP ONE WIPE 


come to tea, I shall make it with my own hands ; after which I 
shall address them personally, since I have had some experience 
as a widow, while Bruce, as an orphan, will say a few words to the 
children afterward; he can’t begin too early. Then one of the 
chaplains, who has a Kodak camera, is going to photograph us all, 
including of course me, in my plain black garments, and a copy 
will be given to every widow present, for an example to the diocese 
of modesty of apparel. I have left out Monday, have I ? Oh, yes, 

I see I have ! Well, on Monday it is the ‘Discharged Footmen’s 
Friendl}^,’ and our late butler will address the company on ‘ Some 
of the Fundamental Laws of Domestic Economy.’ Say I do not 
understand the profession of being a bishop’s wife after that ? Say 
I can’t set an example to myself and everybody else when I try ? 
Now, do you like me, husband ? Am I not good, am I not nice, 
am I not sweet, am I not pretty, am I not all your fancy painted 
me, and a good deal more besides ? You’ve decided to allow me 
a weekly sum, I know you have; I can see ‘allowance’ written all 
over your face. What a strange fine face it is ! And in every 
line of your broad forehead I trace precepts and maxims ; in every . 
curve of your mouth I read the low figure you are thinking of ! 
Your very smile reproaches me ; your lips are loaded with remon- 
strances ; your proposed phrases exhort me to amendment. I assure 
you I am amended already. Now, believe me, do. Sit down here ! 

I have left one arm-chair, an old one, in the room on purpose for 
your accommodation, with broad arms for mine. You will get 
your dinner presently, and I hope you will approve of it. I have 
ordered three mutton-chops and a single bottle of soda-water, but 
it will not be ready yet awhile. I can give you an orange if you 
are hungry, to keep you going till the housemaid brings the chops. 
Oranges are twenty to the shilling in the market-place now. You 
won’t have one ? Well then, kiss me. Am I grown too grave, or 
shall I sit upon your knee ? There is nothing to crush about me 
now. Last week j^ou could not expect me to be affectionate, I was 
only loyal. One sentiment at a time should always prevail in the 
mind of every well-conducted young woman.” 

Who could have resisted her when her especially provocative 
beauty was thus set off by the charm of contrast ? And yet this 
was the same woman who had so lately posed as a queen, gorgeous 


AN UNEXPECTED MOVE 


263 


and unapproachable in her complicated magnificence. Her hus- 
band found her even more charming now in her artistic, if some- 
what exaggerated simplicity; she was like a nun, or rather like a 
lady-abbess, and yet she sat upon his knee and nestled in his arms. 
He was fain to caress her sliining hair, even while he expressed a 
hope that the urgently necessary reform, thus happily initiated, 
would endure ; but she stopped his mouth, as she well knew how, 
and refused to attend to the few grave words which he did insist 
upon making audible, even to her reluctant ears. She cut short 
all further remonstrances by protesting the sincerity of her own 
good resolutions, and he was but too glad to believe her. 

“ Have you not already set everybody an example of heroism ? ” 
he said. 

Well, then,” she retorted, “why do you doubt that I have more 
copies in my book? Why, I can purchase forty-eight excellent 
moral maxims for the precise sum of one penny, in a copy-book 
for Bruce’s benefit. At least, may I not reckon myself worth as 
much as that ? ” Presently she changed the subject. “ Did you 
hear that Mr. Brabazon-Farnaby was in town before you met him 
at dinner at the hotel ? And did you know that he had called upon 
me several times ? He has bought a pony for Bruce ; it is a very 
small one, and now that he is a young gentleman of large and 
independent expectations, I do not feel called upon to deny him 
luxuries which may not be meant for me.” 

While talking she still kept her place on his knee, and lifting up 
the black worsted sock, made as though to continue her work. 

“And were you awfully jealous about Mr. Brabazon-Farnaby?” 
she further asked, without lifting her eyes from the sock. 

But at this her husband resolutely put her from him, and she, 
covertly watching, noted the change in his countenance as he 
said : 

“ Victoria, there are some subjects on which I cannot hear you 
joke ; this is one of them. Be so good as not to allude to the sub- 
ject again in any future conversation which we may have. I may 
as well inform you that I have reasons, with wliich you are unac- 
quainted, for what I say. Do not ask me any questions; I prefer 
to drop the subject.” 

“Evidently; together with the object and the acquaintance- 


264 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


ship ! ” she said, opening her lovely eyes wide, with a look like 
that of a puzzled and astonished child. 

Dr. Garfoyle regarded her gravely for a moment, as though in 
thought, and then left the room. He had not the slightest inten- 
tion of insulting her by telling her that some vulgar spy had 
previously given him a slanderous version of the visits which had 
been so frankly accepted and reported by her. But he did not 
desire a continuance of the honor of Mr. Farnaby’s acquaintance ; 
and he knew his wife to be woman of the world enough to accept 
the hint as sufficient. He had no fear of either hearing or seeing 
any more of the Hon. Lionel Brabazon-Farnaby, whether at Croy- 
land or Constantinople, for the remaining term of his natural life. 
So far the heart of Victoria’s husband at least might safely trust 
her ! 

Just about this time Victoria made an important acquaintance in 
her nearest neighbor, a very wealthy lady, whose grounds adjoined 
those of Croyland Court. Mrs. Basil Boscombe, in her younger 
days, had lived much, packing emotions and events in a reckless 
way which had rendered her an old woman at fifty. She had seen 
everybody, she had been everywhere, had heard everything, had 
tliought about everything. She had enjoyed most things, and had 
suffered as many or even more. How she ’was a widow, childless, 
invalided, and sofa-ridden. It chanced that Victoria, in pursuance 
of the plan by which she undertook to convert herself into a walking 
copy-book, found it necessary to the injunction, ‘‘ Sympathize with 
the Sick and Suffering,” to call upon Mrs. Boscombe. It will be 
seen from this that she had already advanced so far as the letter S 
in her dramatic rendering of moral maxims ; a circumstance which 
might be taken to augur ill for the future stability of her conduct, 
since her reformation had not taken place until the second week of 
January, and she paid her first call upon Mrs. Basil Boscombe in 
the third week of February. 

The ground was covered with snow, but Victoria picked her way 
on foot through the unswept lane which divided the two proper- 
ties, and she was* rewarded in a perfectly unlooked for manner. 
Her welcome was warm and unconventional; she spent an hour of 
keen interest. It was the very thing she needed, this stimulating, 
free, and unfettered gossip, world-gossip, with neither local coloring 


AN UNEXPECTED MOVE 


265 


nor limitation of party or of person. So much goodness as she had 
been indulging in had taken it out of her horribly. 

Mrs. Boscombe was not at all too strait-laced to discuss men and 
manners freely, as they had liberally presented themselves, in a 
vividly recollected past, to herself and her fair visitor; while at the 
same time she was too well-bred a member of society ever to forget 
that Victoria was the wife of the bishop of the diocese. She had 
not much love of the clergy herself ; but living as she did in a 
cathedral town, beneath the wing of the Church, she knew how 
wisely to envelop and label all the social criticisms which she 
allowed herself to insinuate, rather than to utter. She also cleverly 
tried to rivet a pleasant intimacy with Victoria by placing her 
under an obligation ; and as the one lady was quite as clever as 
the other, Victoria accepted the situation quite openly. Indeed 
it suited her exceedingly well so to do, and it may perhaps be 
guessed that when she walked through snow quite a foot deep in 
places, and entered Mrs. Boscombe’s drawing-room wet, and leav- 
ing foot-prints of snow to melt where she stood by the invalid’s 
couch, that she had already conceived the design which was thus 
communicated to the other lady. 

“ Had she really walked ? Where then was her carriage ? ” 

Victoria explained that she had sent it up to town to be reno- 
vated, after the rough usage it had received in the accident at the 
mines. This was all she chose to say, but Mrs. Boscombe, who 
heard everything, had already learned all about the domestic 
reform in the bishop’s establishment, and was well aware of the 
current report that, owing to financial difficulties, the bishop’s car- 
riage and horses had gone up to town to be sold. She immediately 
ordered her own carriage out for Victoria, and further placed it 
unlimitedly at her future disposal. She only spoke the truth in 
explaining “ that she was quite unable to make any use of it during 
the winter months, and that as her horses were eating their heads 
off in her stables, and her men in their houses, the greatest service 
next to coming to see her, which the bishop’s wife could render 
her,” would be ‘‘ to use them as her own.” 

This arrangement, in fact, worked very well. It was suitably 
represented to the bishop; it was suitably represented to the ser- 
vants; it was suitably represented to everybody by the astute Mrs. 


266 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


Boscombe. To the dean’s wife, and other wives of the cathedral 
clergy, she spoke with gratitude of the “ dear bishop’s wife’s kind- 
ness in consenting temporarily to use her equipage to her inferior 
clerical callers she varied the statement, and carefully spoke of 
“ the wife of our revered diocesan,” as a manner of speech becoming 
for them. 

So Victoria gained her end, as indeed she generally did, and 
found herself in possession of a luxurious carriage, with no acknowl- 
edgment to make for it beyond the obligation of paying almost 
a daily visit to its owner — visits, indeed, which soon became the 
one stimulating event of her monotonous days. Mrs. Basil Bos- 
combe grew more and more piquante as Victoria got to know her 
better. Intercourse with her was the only safety-valve Victoria 
found at hand ; perhaps it alone enabled her to complete the cate- 
gory of moral examples which she had undertaken to set. Once 
inside Mrs. Basil Boscombe’s drawing-room, she was able to exer- 
cise powers and to play with ideas quite unrecognized among the 
forty-eight excellent maxims which she had mentioned to the 
bishop. 

“ The margin of me finds expression here,” she one day confessed 
to her friend; and that lady looked at her with eyes which accused 
that margin ” of being an extremely wide and varied surface. 

“ It’s a dangerous thing,” she said, “to have so much of your 
nature silenced.” 

“ It will force itself to be heard all over the diocese one of these 
days unbidden,” said Victoria. “ Stand up for me when the day 
comes, Mrs. Boscombe. I ask it now, because then I shall be indif- 
ferent to praise or blame. Good-by ! ” 


CHAPTER XXIII 

A TRIUMPH OF AUDACITY 

It was the anniversary of the day on which Dr. Garfoyle had 
been consecrated bishop of the See of Croyland, and had married 
Victoria Goldenour. It was a scorching day in July, and Victoria 
had arranged to celebrate it by a monstrous garden party. This 


A TRIUMPH OF AUDACITY 


267 


would, she told the bishop, be at ouce ‘‘ cheap and comprehensive.” 
Accordingly, a great gathering of clergy and laity had been 
invited. Victoria herself had selected it as being auspicious ; the 
bishop himself would have preferred that hours so full of strictly 
private, and to himself personally of sacred association, should 
have been observed in the seclusion of their own home, and 
solemnized quietly by some service of perfect union and com- 
munion ; but he was ever ready to defer to the wishes of his 
adored wife, and she had chosen to have a vast and miscellaneous 
gathering of friends and acquaintances, supposed to participate in 
the emotions belonging to the day. 

Well, the friends were arriving every moment, smiling and 
pleased and in their best array, and Victoria was missing — had 
been missing, in fact, all the morning. Never a soul had seen her 
since she had kissed Bruce when he went to his lessons at ten 
o’clock. She had given all the orders for the day, and had care- 
full}'’ regulated all the details of the entertainment. She had not 
neglected to provide a single requisite item for the guests. She 
had chosen the dress she herself meant — so she said — to wear ; it 
was a very handsome one, for she had months before tired of her 
freak of wearing black. Then, after embracing Bruce tenderly, 
she had gone to the room she usually occupied in the mornings, 
and had not been seen again. When luncheon-time came she was 
missing, and she had not been seen or heard of since, though the 
garden and grounds, and every likely or unlikely place, had been 
quietly hunted for her. Dr. Garfoyle had even sent to the rail- 
way station and had made enquiries there; to Mrs. Basil Bos- 
combe’s ; and to other likely haunts, in so far as it was possible 
to enquire anywhere without awakening suspicion or exciting 
remark. 

The bishop seemed painfully nervous upon this point ; so at 
least it struck Mrs. Gruter. It chanced that both she and her 
adopted daughter, Helen Keltridge, were staying for a day or two 
at Croyland Court, their visit being timed with a view to the 
special anniversary, and Mrs. Gruter now stood in secret consulta- 
tion with the bishop, as to the strange disappearance of his wife. 

Mrs. Basil Boscombe, when interviewed, could throw no light 
pn the matter. She confessed that Victoria had evidently tired 


268 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


of visiting her of late, and that she had privately considered her 
restless and miserable. It was unfortunately rendered extremely 
difficult to keep the matter quiet by the very fact that everyone 
most likely to know and miss the bishop’s wife was expected to 
be present in the grounds of Croyland Court. As Mrs. Gruter 
glanced out of the bishop’s study window over the lovely gardens, 
where the grass was now scorched and burned with a fierce sun and 
a prolonged drought, she perceived that the gay groups of people 
were beginning to gather in knots, or to move about with one 
accord in some agitation this way and that, like bees bereft of 
their queen. 

“It’s an occasion for a lie. Dr. Garfoyle,” she said; “and as you 
are a bishop and cannot tell your own lies, I must sacrifice my con- 
science and tell it for you. A good lie, well told, is all that is 
required,” repeated the lady with decision; for, to say the truth, 
though she felt annoyance, she experienced no anxiety about the 
situation, which struck her as being simply whimsical. But when 
she looked at the bishop’s wide, benign countenance, so often 
likened by her ready tongue to an expanse of the fen-lands in 
autumn, when the sun shone quietly down upon shorn fields of 
stubble ; when she saw how it had grown blanched in hue, and 
furrowed with pressing fear, she changed her attitude and enquired 
gravely : 

“ What is there that I can do for you ? Something must be 
done, and done quickly; all the company is assembling with detest- 
able punctuality, and you do not, I suppose, wish to have them 
storming the house. They should be kept in the grounds as long as 
possible.” 

The bishop groaned. 

“ Pray go,” he said, “ and receive them all for us, Mrs. Gruter. 
I will myself join you immediately. I must carry this thing 
through. My friend, Bruce’s tutor, can absent himself without 
remark. I have already sent him in a direction which I think pos- 
sible. But before I join you I am anxious to see Mrs. Keltridge, 
here, alone. Pray send her to me. I am thankful for her pres- 
ence and for yours at this moment.” 

“ Yes, I am glad we were staying with you,” said Mrs. Gruter 
kindly, “ though positively I feel we are all creating a storm in a 


A TRIUMPH OF AUDACITY 


269 


tea-cup. What is there in a woman’s being absent six hours at an 
inconvenient and unexpected moment ? Well, I will go outside, 
and I’ll undertake to keep all the rout at bay for a couple of hours 
at least. I will send Helen to you, but I fear you will have to put 
in an appearance, if you wish to stop the tongue of rumor. There 
is, no doubt, some perfectly reasonable and trivial motive at the 
bottom of all this worry; but for the present I shall say roundly 
that your wife has been taken suddenly ill, and is unable at the last 
moment to do her duty.” 

“ It is true,” said the bishop ; “ I have cause for imagining that 
she has been suffering of late.” 

Helen, go to him, he wants you,” said Mrs. Gruter, when she 
had found her adopted daughter in the garden. “I believe he 
knows or guesses more than he has yet said. He will tell me noth- 
ing, but he will tell you all. What a mercy that we two are here, 
and that our husbands are not ! My poor dear rather prefers his 
nurse to me; it is a change for him in his old age to see a fair, 
smooth face, two pink cheeks, crinkly yellow hair, and hard brown 
eyes, instead of my old ugly visage ; and as for your husband, 
Helen, we all know he is writing a book and loathes ceremonies.” 

Then Mrs. Gruter took up her position upon the top step out- 
side the drawing-room window, waited till she saw the dean’s wife 
coming along, stopped her, and made her little speech in a pro- 
nounced tone of voice, apologizing for the absence of the bishop’s 
wife, on account of sudden illness which had attacked her only that 
morning. She only hoped Victoria would not appear in the midst 
of things now to discomfit her ; “ it would be quite like her.” 

The dean’s wife was suffering from the effects of the extreme 
heat of the weather, and had no other thought in her mind. She 
was a stout person, a likely subject for apoplexy. So working her 
fan diligently, she protested that she “did not wonder”; that she 
herself had been “overcome in quite the same way,” but with 
“ even greater rapidity ”; having begun to make her husband a cup 
of tea, she had put in one lump of sugar, but had been positively 
unable to add a second. 

This decided the matter, the people behind all heard that Mrs. 
Garfoyle was suffering from sunstroke or heat-apoplexy. The 
dean’s wife concluded her personal narrative by adding, “ Now, that 


270 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


is literally true.” It was “ literally untrue,” as Mrs. Gruter well 
guessed, but it served her turn as a story, so she kept up the illu- 
sion; and when the bishop stepped out upon the terrace, he was 
greeted by condolences which did equally well for any sort of 
affliction. He received them all in courteous silence, accepting the 
sympathy and waiving the interpretation put upon the matter. 

“ On your wedding-day too, so sad to have Mrs. Garfoyle laid 
up,” said the cemetery chaplain’s wife, quite forgetting her own 
insignificance in the glow of her kindly sympathy. “ Why, we 
have kept thirty wedding-ddys, and have never failed to sit down 
to supper together, with all the children around us.” 

“Where is the little boy?” asked another clergy- wife on the 
outskirts of the company ; “sent away, lest he should catch it, 
didn’t somebody say ? ” 

Thus the company soon decided that Mrs. Garfoyle was ill of an 
infectious fever, and by common consent they avoided entering the 
house, which was just exactly what Mrs. Gruter desired. 

Now, Bruce had, as it happened, been sent with Shadrach to a 
distant room by his step-father, who did not wish the boys exposed 
to bear the brunt of feminine curiosity down below. Bruce took 
his mother’s absence quite serenely, and displayed no fears for her 
safety. He was accustomed to her paying many calls and being 
absent for hours daily, and he had been carefully kept in ignorance 
of anything unusual in the present situation. 

When all the lies were “ well told,” and were rolling and gather- 
ing cohesion like snow-balls, without any further impetus from 
herself, Mrs. Gruter found time to draw her adopted daughter 
aside and rapidly to question her upon her private interview with 
the bishop. 

“There the poor man goes,” she said, “suffering tortures, not a 
doubt of it, while apparently listening to that bald-headed parson. 
He finds it easiest to stick to the men and their outside concerns, 
evidently. Women fasten like flies on a weak place, when men are 
too obtuse to know there is one.” 

“ Women talk personalities, men generalities,” responded Helen ; 
“ so he doubtless prefers them.” 

“ Pray, is he really imagining that she has committed suicide, 
either ph^^sical or moral, Helen ? What did he tell you ? Has he 


A TBIUMPH dF AUDACITY 


271 


any reason to suppose she was discontented with her lot ? Has she, 
by any chance, left it written in a letter ? They always do. From 
the little that I have seen of her she never struck me favorably, 
and you know it. I should have said she might be the death of 
two or three husbands, but that she would never come to grief 
herself.” 

‘‘ You are hard upon her, mother ! She has made him an excel- 
lent wife ; she is deservedly popular in the neighborhood, among 
all classes of the people. Even the stiff and starched set have col- 
lapsed and taken her in; and, as for the poor, they adore her. She 
is universally beloved — indeed, no one could know her without 
admiring her.” 

“ I could,” said Mrs. Gruter. 

‘‘ You did not know her, dear mother,” said Helen warmly. 

“ It’s my opinion that we none of us know her yet, but that we 
are all going to know her better soon,” retorted the elder lady. 

“ Well,” pursued Helen, I suppose her husband may be allowed 
to possess some knowledge of her, and he declares that she has been 
simply perfect to him, as she has always been to her child; and 
that, since they returned home in January, she has not given him a 
moment’s grief until ” 

“ Until when ? ” questioned Mrs. Gruter. “ What stemmed the 
current of this domestic bliss ? This is not the first break-down, 
I am very sure.” 

‘‘Well, from time to time he certainly confesses to having enter- 
tained a doubt whether she was herself as happy as she was making 
him. She had grown restless of late.” 

“ The signs ? ” demanded Mrs. Gruter. 

“ She had taken to wandering away for long evening walks alone 
in the dusk, and coming home very late at night ; often going to 
her boy’s room on her return. He found her one night lately lying 
on her boy’s bed, across it, at the foot. Bruce’s little naked feet 
were peeping out beneath the clothes; she had gathered them in 
her hands, and was holding them pressed against her cheek, and 
her tears were raining over them. When she found he had dis- 
covered her retreat, she seemed annoyed; and ever since then, 
when she has shown signs of wishing to avoid him, he has refrained 
from following her.” 


2V2 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


“ Foolish man — better pursue her with his pastoral staff ; if 
bishops aren’t permitted a commoner kind of stick ! Well, go on.” 

“ She has made retreats for herself both in the house and grounds, 
and she has been accustomed to shut herself up in them with her 
boy whenever the fancy seized her.” 

“ Now, we are getting to it ! Pray, has this perfect wife ever 
run away from home before ? ” asked Mrs. Gruter coldly. 

Helen Keltridge hesitated. 

‘‘ One day she disappeared for some hours longer than usual. 
She took a run to the coast by train, went and got soaked through 
with the waves on the pier-head at Cross Seas, for no other appar- 
ent reason except that the impulse seized her; but when she came 
back, and he instantly proposed a family migration in due form, she 
resolutely refused to stir from home.” 

“ Pray, has he sent now to the pier-head ? ” 

Helen nodded. 

“ Oh, she is probably sulking in some bathing machine fifty miles 
away; whence she will in due course reappear with a pocketful 
of crabs and seaweed for Bruce, all the livelier for having tortured 
her husband and worried us all. She is fickle and changeable. 
She has a morbid craving for scenes and effects ; for sensation — 
sensation of any sort. The only drawback to her present complete 
satisfaction in her escapade is probably that she can’t be here to 
see the effect of it. It’s a grand transformation scene which she 
has got up for our benefit on the anniversary of her wedding-day. 
If her unfortunate husband, whose devotion to her gives her the 
power to torture him thus, could only prove to her that she was not 
worth looking after, she’d worship him for the rest of his life.” 

Helen shook her head. 

“ I doubt it,” she answered. “ I cannot deny that there is truth 
in some of the things you have said ; but Victoria is no sham — she 
really is a genuine creature. She is no mere actress, though she 
dramatizes her life.” 

“ Pray, do you alone possess the key to her irritating conduct, 
then ?” 

‘‘ In a sense, dear Mrs. Gruter, I do. Strange as it may seem to 
us who know what a beautiful nature Dr. Garfoyle’s is, I am yet 
convinced that his wife is a miserably unhappy creature. I have 


A TRIUMPH OP AUDACITY 


273 


always thought that slie married him chiefly for the sake of doing 
her duty by her boy. Just think what a tragic history hers has 
been — her first husband’s death, Bruce’s illness, then his accident; 
her own dependence on an unkindly family. She felt Dr. Garfoyle 
to be a tower of safety to which to entrust the child’s future. She 
resolutely sacrificed herself for her child when she married Dr. 
Garfoyle. Moreover, odd as it may seem to you, mother, there 
were religious motives in the matter. She thought it would be a 
sort of righteous, action to cast in her lot with one so good and 
saintly ; slie mistrusted her own impulses and inclinations ; she 
was afraid of making some unwise marriage — say with her ‘Nice’ 
admirer, the Constantinople person. She knew that Dr. Garfoyle 
regarded marriage as a very sacred sacramental sort of thing; he 
told her what he felt thereon, and tried to make her comprehend 
his feeling. She missed the point; but she came to regard her 
marriage with him much as a nun might look upon taking the veil; 
or a ritualistic maiden in an English church might think of kneel- 
ing bolt upright with an aching spine through a long service, or of 
fasting on Fridays, but to her it has probably been a perpetual 
‘ retreat ’ ever since : one long fast-day, followed by no feast ; 
although neither you nor I can think of him but as one of the 
noblest beings on this earth.” 

“ Well,” confessed Mrs. Gruter, “ I take it that the sons of God, 
when they mated with the daughters of men, were not the only 
ones to be pitied in the sequence. Men and women, with diges- 
tions for bread and cheese, may no doubt be starved to death on 
angel’s food. Your friend Victoria doubtless requires quails ! 
She is sick of manna, that is what is the matter. It’s an old tale. 
The world is very monotonous ; but considering how plentiful 
quails are, and how scarce is manna, it’s a pity things are so fear- 
fully mixed. Here is a man in ten thousand, by whose choice any 
woman might be honored, and this silly, frivolous, widowed thing 
plays at martyrdom in being his wife.” 

“ It is my belief,” said Helen, “ that when Victoria realized this 
morning what she had done in asking all these people, and felt 
that she would have to face them all and to receive all their con- 
gratulations on her wedding-day, she simply obeyed one of her 
sudden impulses in running away to hide her misery. See how she 
18 


274 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


even expresses herself in the letter I had from her last week when 
she invited us here.” 

“ Oh, there is a letter, then ! I thought so.” 

“ Yes, to me ; but not to her husband. Read this postscript, 
mother : 

“ ‘ Where congregations ne’er break up, 

And Sabbaths have no end 

— that is what my life is here. Come and make a break in it, for 
pity’s sake. I cannot bear it much longer. I am weary of all 
things, save of my boy’s beautiful face and of his delicious laughter, 
which is too good for heaven itself. I am sick of hymns. I loathe 
meetings. I abhor clergy-wives. I detest young curates and dis- 
creet chaplains. I have— to tell the truth— more than a lurking 
notion that the Church of Rome is vastly superior to the Church of 
England, especially in that it enforces the celibacy of the clergy. 

I am tired of the monotony of my days ; I am disgusted with 
their occupations. I am absolutely destitute of the religious senti- 
ment — that is the conclusion I have come to— and my husband is 
steeped and saturated in it. Pity me, Helen, and permit me the 
relief of speech for once.’ ” 

“You didn’t show him that?” Mrs. Gruter asked in some 
anxiety. 

“We spoke of it together. He understands it all now ; but I 
have no real anxiety about her and I hope I made him share that 
confidence. So long as her boy is here, she will never go away for 
long. Probably she will return to-night.” 

“ Helen, how could you tell such a man as that that his wife 
was tired of him and miserable in his society ? ” 

“ We sought for the truth of the facts together,” said Helen 
simply. “ In by-gone years he helped me ; to-day it seemed to 
recur to his mind, and he appeared to feel a relief in showing me 
all his fears. I owed it to him to be loyal to what I knew to be 
the truth in speaking to him.” 

“Yes, I believe you could do it,” said her adopted mother, “but 
I know no other woman who could have explained this to him.” 

“Well,” she added, as they separated to resume their inter- 
rupted task of entertaining the bishop’s unwelcome guests, “ L 


A TBIUMPH OF AUDACITY 


215 


have told lies for him, and you have told the truth to him. What 
more can any man desire or deserve of his friends ? ” 

‘‘How dry the grass is ! We had the prayer for rain on Sun- 
day,” said a country vicar’s wife — wishing to be conversational — 
“ and it does look threatening over the hills.” 

“ You may have that prayer in villages,” replied the dean’s 
feminine representative loftily; “ but we do not go in for it in the 
cathedral. On the contrary, the dean preached on Sunday even- 
ing on ‘ Evolution in Prayer.’ ” 

“ Glad 1 wasn’t there,” said Mrs. Gruter audibly. 

“ Oh, it’s quite simple if you’ve any modern education at all,” 
said the other lady crushingly ; “ it only means that we pray so 
much better now than they used to do in Old Testament times. 
My dear husband illustrated it so beautifully for the ignorant by 
remarking how Moses might have said the prayer for rain, but not 
St. Peter.” 

“ I’ll stick to Moses, then,” said Mrs. Gruter; “ he got them water 
anyway, and St. Peter never undertook to. Now she’s offended 
and will take her leave, and all the rest will follow,” observed Mrs. 
Gruter to her daughter, and even as she said so it happened ; 
within ten minutes of this social encounter the guests were rapidly 
taking their departure. The bishop shut himself up in his study, 
Mrs. Gruter and Helen made a melancholy meal together, and 
Helen persuaded Bruce to go to bed, wide-eyed and unhappy be- 
cause he was told that his mother could not come and see him that 
night. 

At midnight Helen Keltridge was sitting alone in her room 
reviewing the unsatisfactory events of the day, when, without any 
warning, Victoria herself entered softly and suddenly stood before 
her. She was dressed in dark clothing, and wore an indistinguish- 
able cloak and hat. She dropped into an empty chair opposite her 
friend’s, and, looking at Helen with a questioning gesture, asked 
with an affectation of sprightliness : 

“ Well, and how did the party go off ? ” 

Helen started up. 

“Victoria, have you been to see your husband, to relieve his 
terrible anxiety about you ? ” 

“ No, I have not,” said Mrs. Garfoyle ; “ I have been in to see my 


276 


THE HUSBAND OP ONE WIFE 


boy. I went there at once to make sure that he was well, and 
asleep, and happy. Then I came in here to have a cosey chat with 
you. I am thirsty and tired. I want some tea, but I don’t care to 
go and wake the maids.” 

‘‘ How did you get in ? ” asked Helen, hurriedly dressing her- 
self. 

“ Oh, in a big house like this there are always windows and doors 
that can be opened if you only know the way, especially in sultry 
weather when windows are not closed till dark. As a matter of 
fact, I haye a convenient mode of entrance of my own, which no 
one else but Shadrach has happened to discover; in fact, he used it 
first and has never found me out. I had to wait till everyone was 
gone to bed; I didn’t care to meet them. As soon as I saw all the 
lights put out except in Terence’s study and in your room, I came 
in by Shadrach’s entry. That boy will turn out ill, will be a curate, 
I don’t doubt it. Where are you going now, Helen ? ” 

‘‘ Down to your husband’s study to tell him you are come home 
safe and well. You forget how cruelly you have treated him. 
He is a thousand times too good for you ! ” 

“ Indeed he is, quite good enough for you yourself, if only Mr. 

Keltridge Pi’ay, tell him I am penitent. He approves of 

suitable emotions, only do not let him ask to see me. I am tired; 
I cannot stand a fuss to-night. Manage him for me, Helen; you 
have all sorts of consoling ways about you which I never could 
acquire ; my ways are provocative alike in love or hate, yours 
soothing and consolatory. I am a stimulant, you are a sedative. 
That is the difference between us. Tell him I’ll come down to 
breakfast and will make his tea in the morning as good as gold, if 
only he will overlook me to-night, for indeed I am very sorry to 
have grieved him so. Entreat him to forgive me, for I am dead 
tired.” 

As she spoke, Victoria threw herself back in a low easy-chair, 
took off her boots, which were covered with dust, thrust her feet 
into Helen Keltridge’s slippers, bathed her face and hands with 
eau-de-Cologne, and was immediately more than half asleep. 

Helen found the bishop’s door locked. 

“ She has come ! ” she cried. ‘‘ Pray, let me in.” 

He rose, evidently from his knees. The drama of this man’s life 


A TRIUMPH OF AUDACITY 


211 


was lived out absolutely in the presence of the Invisible. The 
sorrow which had just burst upon him was to him but another 
sacred secret, a new tie between his own soul and that of his 
Master. Already, before he heard his friend’s tidings, the triumph 
of victory had shone upon his expressive countenance. 

“ I knew it already,” he said. “ I felt sure that she had come ! 
Now, what can I do for her? You have done your part, I well 
know, my friend, and for her own sake, which renders your gentle 
aid doubly welcome to me.” 

Leave her to herself, for she is tired out. She will come down 
to-morrow morning as though nothing were amiss.” 

“In the morning I must speak with her,” he said in a tone which 
admitted of no discussion ; “but for to-night is there no little thing 
I can do to serve her even ? ” 

“ For to-night you can get her some tea,” said Helen, conscious 
to her very finger-tips of the drop from the bishop’s mental atti- 
tude to that of Victoria’s needs. Taking up a lamp he hurried 
off, thus gratifying an almost irresistible need of tenderness. Leav- 
ing him to discover his way about the basement, Helen paused on 
her return to her room and tapped at Mrs. Gruter’s door ; that 
lady admitted her, dressed in a wonderful dressing-gown of her 
old professor’s, with a shawl tied over her head. 

“ So she has come back, and what is he going to do with her ? ” 
she enquired. 

“ At present he is getting her some tea.” 

“If he isn’t going to have it out with her to-night he is making 
a very great mistake, and so are you in aiding and abetting him. 
It’s a pity,” said Mrs. Gruter, as, groaning with gymnastic effort, 
she climbed into the high bed, “ that there isn’t an infant Garfoyle 
howling in a cradle; then we should probably all be permitted to 
sleep in peace. I’m out of patience with her. I shall go home to- 
morrow.” 

“He is not coming in here, is he?” asked Victoria, starting up 
from sleep at the sound of the tea-tray being deposited on the table 
outside the door. 

“ No, he is not,” said Helen sternly ; “ go to the door and wish 
him good-night.” 

Victoria obeyed reluctantly. Then, in this inconsistent nature, a 


278 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


sudden revulsion of feeling awoke. Her fortitude completely gave 
way. She burst into agitated sobs. 

“ Good-night ! I love you ! Oh, I do love you ! ” she cried. 
Then, changing into pathetic entreaty, “ Helen ! keep the door 
shut ! ” As soon as the bishop’s retreating footsteps echoed along 
the corridor, smiles and even laughter lit up her lovely face. Oh, 
I am so tired ! ” she said. ‘‘ I’ve been tramping up and down 
Crossborough moors and hill-sides all the live-long day, just for the 
sake of being free. I got upon a broad flat expanse of moorland, 
where nobody might be met but now and then a stray shepherd. I 
tramped on for hours, and I cried out all my miseries to the blazing 
heavens. Once there was a brief thunder-shower, then the darkness 
of the sky overshadowed me. I was on the top of Crossborough 
Beacon, and the black clouds swirled over my head like curtains. 
I hid myself in a clump of trees a little way down the hilLside, 
and I lifted up my wet face to the rain, which mingled with the 
tears running down my cheeks. After that I felt better, and I 
turned my steps homeward again ; but I had lost my way com- 
pletely, and I wandered about, I cannot tell for how long, until a lad 
put me back into the road. Well, here I am ; now I am good again, 
better than ever. You will see to-morrow morning, but to-night I 
must sleep by Bruce’s bed. He has not missed me, has he ? You 
would not let him be unhappy. My husband would see to that. 
I could not have left home for an hour had I had any fears for him. 
I have not another word to say.” 

And, indeed, she was asleep upon a mattress on the floor, by 
Bruce’s side, almost before her friend had closed the door ; and 
whoever waked in that house that night, it certainly was not 
its mistress, who slept an absolutely dreamless slumber, and was 
awakened only in the morning by her boy half-strangling her with 
eager kisses. Victoria lay still exactly as she had flung herself at 
night in the immovability of extreme fatigue, but she locked her 
hands about him when she felt Bruce’s cool, fresh kisses on her face. 
He laughed and wriggled out of her embrace. Tlien, in his white 
night-shirt, he flew to the window, opened it, and, snatching at a 
big bunch of late-flowering red roses, began playfully to pelt his 
mother with them. 

When, flve minutes later, the anxious man below ascended the 


A TRIUMPH OF AUDACITY 


279 


stairs, he was greeted by tbe sounds of merry strife. Victoria was 
romping with her boy. The bishop’s heart was filled with sorrow- 
ful tenderness and pity. She had left him to a night in which he 
had sounded bitter depths of humiliation and anguish. Had he 
sought indeed “ too late ” to blend his life with this fair woman’s? 
His feeling for Victoria had been intense. Even when they were 
comparative strangers he had never failed to discern the heroic 
element in her nature, and when personal ties were added his heart 
had melted with tenderness for her. He grieved for her most 
truly, because of his own failure to secure her happiness. He would 
fain have given her only pity and compassion, but he would not be 
true to himself or to her were he to permit such escapades without 
one warning word. If she could not remain at his side from affec- 
tion, yet she must remain from duty. Duty forbade him to excuse 
her altogether from her duties toward himself, yet he would arrange 
for her to travel, to leave home for a considerable period with her 
boy, whose health might well furnish an excuse for her absence. 

Indeed, the bishop had noticed with deep concern of late that 
the boy’s nerves seemed even more delicately balanced than in the 
days preceding his Milanese accident ; and though his coloring 
was good, and he had the agile movements of a creature governed 
by an unusually quick intelligence, yet in his step-father’s loving 
eyes he seemed to be a rare plant whose hold upon the earth, in 
which he was so slightly rooted, was more shaken than even his 
mother realized. A sea-voyage was the best thing for him. His 
mother might well take him out to her own old home in Australia, 
to the places associated in her memory with the happy hours of 
her early life there with Bruce’s own father. This was the unselfish 
scheme matured by the bishop in those early morning hours. It 
was a terrible thing for him to arrange for them to leave him, but 
he never hesitated so soon as he perceived the necessity for the 
decision. 

Hitherto nothing had served to disillusion him. Beneath the 
inconsistent surface of a disposition magnetized mainly by the 
love of pleasure, Dr. Garfoyle had humbly believed himself to have 
discerned in his wife the revelation of a nature essentially fitted 
for the correction of his own, by its very antagonism to the mystic 
and inward spirit by which his own soul was harmonized. In Vic- 


280 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


toria he had recognized the wholly external and objective habit of 
life, whereby was furnished, he devoutly believed, an equal exposi- 
tion. of divine truth. In uniting his lot with hers he had fully 
trusted that she had instinctively, although not intellectually, made 
some such corresponding discovery; that she had felt that he too 
supplied some motive requisite to give a sublime meaning to her 
life, which should render their alliance holy. The first shock had 
come at the New Year, the second when she fled from him upon 
the anniversary of her wedding-day. Then through the noiseless 
solitude of his midnight vigil passed the whisper of voices audible 
only to his inner ears. The world of spirits in that hour was very 
near to him, and in the unspeakably intense realization of the 
divine participation in all human experience he remained rapt 
until the brightness of another dawn fell upon the earth. 

After making a careful toilet and removing all signs of his night’s 
watch Dr. Garfoyle had mounted the stairs which led to Bruce’s 
room, with his heart full, not of his own part in the sorrow which 
had overtaken them, but of Victoria’s pain, Victoria’s unhappi- 
ness ; he paused upon the landing, determining to enter the room 
so soon as the first sounds should prove the mother and child to be 
awake. But he had not to linger on the threshold, for the sounds 
of ringing, happy laughter greeted at once his listening ears ; not 
Bruce’s boyish tones alone, but Victoria’s musical mirth joining in 
happy unison with her boy’s treble. She had a fine contralto 
voice ; she sung but little, but her laughter had always possessed 
tliat characteristic of soft, melodious mirthfulness which accom- 
panies that peculiar quality of voice ; now there was a note of 
voluptuousness in the sound which, to his scholarly fancy, prompted 
the thought that such music of laughter might well have been heard 
in old legendary days, when fabled gods and nymphs sported upon 
happy plains. But when he entered the room Dr. Garfoyle felt 
that all the pictures which he had ever seen would fail to show the 
charm of the beauty incarnated before him in this loved woman 
and her child. She sat upon the floor in her pale pink robe, the 
warm delicate coloring of her lovely face contrasting with the 
shower of rose-red leaves with which her boy had pelted her. The 
child had leaped from his bath, and like a young Cupid, in innocent, 
blissful nudiDq was sporting round her. Each warm line and 


A TRIUMPH OF AUDACITY 


281 


curve of his young wife’s dainty form, each turn of the child’s 
dear lithe body was full of grace ; the eager hands which grasped 
the flowers he had snatched for the mimic combat ; the drawn-up 
foot that had pressed upon a thorn amid the scattered clusters. 
Never had he seen Victoria look so divinely fair as now, bathed in 
the rosy flifth of the early morning sky; she and her child alike 
seemed just as fresh and sweet as the new day. 

A hot shaft of July sunshine was pouring through the opened 
window; it fell full upon the bishop’s broad white face, as he 
stood grave and motionless in the centre of the room. It strongly 
emphasized the outlines of the shadow which fell around him. 
Where the brightest light is, there the deepest shadows fall ; and 
upon the heart of this man, who stood ever in the light of God, the 
deepest shadow rested. Thus was the forlornness of his situation 
heightened. With his fine head — the head of a saint or of .an 
apostle, yet with a grotesquely human streak in its composition — 
his melancholy gray eyes, and the'straight folds of his ofticial black 
clothing, he presented a remarkable contrast to the bright natural 
coloring of the young mother and her child. His grieved, remon- 
strant attitude, too, was singularly out of keeping with the scene 
which he interrupted. 

When standing on the threshold of the room the music of gay and 
sportive laughter had sounded in the bishop’s ears a note of. classic 
association; but when the morning splendors of a summer’s day, 
streaming in through the opened windows, blinded him momentarily 
by excess of light, these fancies dropped back into oblivion ; the old 
gods vanished into the dust of ages, and his soul was penetrated 
anew with the vision of the All-Beautiful, at whose will the light 
and fragrance filled his heart with rapturous peace. As he stood 
motionless, gazing at the gay and lovely woman whom he adored, 
by love and faith he beheld the divine alchemy transforming the 
dross of earthly failure into the pure gold of heavenly achieve- 
ment ; the perfected soul gathering up the fallen petals of human 
endeavor until they blossomed into the immortal flower whose 
completed perfection no winds might scatter and no time might fade. 

Thus he read the story of their interrupted lives. Thus he 
interpreted these throbbings of quick, unsatisfied sense which 
agitated her perpetually. Thus he translated her passionate yearn- 


282 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


ings for soft pleasures, for harmonious sounds, for fragrant per- 
fumes, for the lustre of light, the shining of gold, and the magic 
of beauty. He, too, delighted in all beauty as expressive of the 
influence of the aspiring soul over the laggard flesh ; he, too, saw in 
all loveliness, which penetrated the mask of the body, an effluence 
from the hidden and the divine. By the light of this^llumination 
he read the story, and drawing her fondly toward him he told 
‘her so. He, too, had yearnings and desires unutterable by him, 
unbreathed even to her, which found their meaning and their 
realization only in the vision of the All-Perfect, the Altogether 
Lovely, the immortal Bridegroom of the widowed soul ; “ and was 
not,” he added, ‘‘ every soul of mortal man widowed in its hour ? 
Beloved, think you not,” he said, ‘‘that since you left me my soul 
too has been desolate ? ” 

The child had left the room naw, and he drew her closer toward 
him, speaking thus. He spoke with lips wfflich never stumbled for 
a word, with face alight with the inspiration of his half -interpreted 
thought, with eyes that did but mirror the uplifted soul, and in the 
tones of his moving voice was the ring of a great rapture, the 
elation of a mighty hope. 

Victoria dropped her roses and thrust them from her with her 
foot, urged by a momentary impulse to proclaim them emblems of 
nothing, but simply worthless flowers to her. The gong sounded 
for breakfast, and she was hungiy. Hitherto she had successfully 
evaded the yearning intensity of her husband’s gaze fixed upon her ; 
now she deliberately met it with playful defiance. Suddenly 
stooping, she filled her hands with masses of red rose-petals, and 
laughingly flung them in his face. It was a triumph of audacity! 


CHAPTER XXIV 

WHAT HELD HER BACK 

Victoria Garfoyle had reached the supreme day of her mortal 
existence. In her earthly career she was to traverse no hours com- 
parable with these which she now entered upon with the breath of 
roses floating around her, and with' her ears filled with her child’s 


WHAT HELD HER BACK 


283 


clear laughter ; unless it might be those of the day whereon her 
brave young husband had gasped his life out at her feet. There 
are beings in whose lives tragic events are apt to assume epic pro- 
portions ; they seem to be marked out for the pursuit of all that 
life holds of torture, yet such are ever those for whom it also holds 
the brightest hours of keenest pleasure. In all the long years of 
her after-life this July day was to stand out black and lurid with 
misery, beside that other day now hidden beneath the shadow of 
the past; and yet she herself paved the pathway which was to 
lead to the scene of her anguish. 

In the utter darkness by which human senses are muffled by the 
envelope of the material world, no sound, no voice, no hint of 
coming ill reached Victoria, as she left on the floor of her room the 
scattered roses, with the thorns of which she had so deeply pierced 
her husband’s heart. With her arms around her boy she descended 
to the breakfast-table. Mrs. Gruter had received a letter giving 
so much better an account of her bed-ridden professor as made her 
wish — so she said — to return home. It seemed possible that he 
might even know her from the nurse with yellow hair and brown 
eyes ; though Helen Keltridge more than guessed that, on this 
occasion at any rate, the old lady’s conscience had discovered a 
dispensatory clause which permitted her to use one of her own 
‘‘good lies ” for her own benefit. Anyway, she departed immedi- 
ately after breakfast. The bishop had his interview with his wife 
in solemn separateness. It did not last long, and Victoria came 
out triumphantly to inform Helen Keltridge that she was going to 
engage her own and Bruce’s passage for Sydney by an early steam- 
ship. Then, annoyed by her friend’s unsympathetic reception of 
the tidings, Victoria ordered Bruce’s pony to be brought round to 
the door, and left Mrs. Keltridge to her own devices. 

The day was Tuesday; the preceding Friday had been occupied 
with a school-treat at which Bruce had been present, and the boy 
had not ridden as usual ; on Saturday it had been discovered that 
the pony must go to be reshod, and again Bruce had not been 
out as usual. Monday again had been the day of the party. This 
was Tuesday, and the pony had had no exercise to speak of since 
the preceding Thursday. When brought round to the door it was 
evidently full of running. Victoria herself did not see it ; she was 


284 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


in her own room deep in a letter just received from Mr. Brabazon- 
Farnaby, in which he informed her of his approaching marriage 
with an American heiress. But Bruce was plucky, and the groom, 
professionally disinclined to discourage him, merely suggested : 

“Take the paddock first, sir, and back by the lane leading to 
the stables, before we take him out on the highroad.” 

At first the pony galloped steadily along without giving the 
slightest cause for uneasiness, but, a little more than halfway 
round the enclosure, just behind them, suddenly sounded the 
shrill, ear-splitting whistle which Shadrach, who daily attended the 
choir school, had picked up from the other boys, to the general 
disgust of the whole household. The pony started, and fought for 
his head ; but so well and straight was his rider sitting that the 
servant judged it best not to interfere, and Bruce successfully 
gained the entrance to the narrow lane leading back to the stables. 
They were but a very short distance from home when Victoria, 
seeing them from a window above and terrified at the pony’s pace, 
rushed downstairs to receive them on their return to the stable- 
yard and to insist upon Bruce’s dismounting at once. 

Shadrach was also dawdling about in the stable-yard, as was his 
custom when dismissed from school. The pony and his rider were 
already so close that Victoria could see the set, tense expression 
upon her boy’s face. The groom was riding side by side with him 
now, and his look was full of anxiety. A couple of hundred yards, 
only a couple of hundred yards now, and the boy would be in 
safety. What could Victoria do? His foot grazed one of the 
posts of the wooden palings which they rushed past. The boy was 
evidently straining every nerve in his efforts to keep straight in 
the saddle, and to clear the railings of the parklike grounds on 
either side. 

“He has lost all control over the pony; it is running away; he 
will fall directly ! ” screamed Victoria in unavailing terror. 

There was no one within hearing but Shadrach. Hitherto 
Shadrach had seen nothing but fun in the affair. His whistle had 
produced a striking effect ; it proved it was the right kind of noise 
to make, that was all ; but now realizing from Mrs. Garfoyle’s 
words the gravity of the situation, the unlucky boy was seized 
with the notion that if he could only close a low barrier of wooden 


WHAT HELD HER BACK 


285 


bars which cut off the stable-yard from the lane before the pony 
and attendant horse reached it, the pony would be stopped in its 
mad course. Thus to close the entrance to the yard was the one 
idea that presented itself to Shadrach’s blundering brain ; and 
quick and active as a boy of his age should be, he leaped to exe- 
cute his thought far more swiftly than anyone could have divined 
or prevented his intention. There came, too late, a scream from 
Victoria, a desperate shout from the groom, a crash of splintered 
timber, and man and horse were rolling on the ground. The pony, 
suddenly checked, stood panting and perfectly motionless ; but 
the boy lay amid the wreckage of splintered bars. 

When Victoria perceived what the wretched boy Shadrach had 
done, she aimed an instinctive blow at him, as he ran back past her 
toward the house, which laid him prostrate on the pavement of the 
yard; he recovered and leaped up in amazement, just after the crash 
occurred, and rushed screaming with inarticulate outcry into the 
house. 

Victoria flew to her boy and lifted him up in her arms. She saw 
that he lived, for his eyelids fluttered. She flew with him into the 
house. There, warned by Shadrach’s cries, the bishop and Helen 
Keltridge met her. Bruce had partially recovered consciousness. 
He stirred uneasily in his mother’s arms. 

“ Oh, father, don’t let mother mind ! ” he cried. “ Oh, darling, 
never mind ! What is it ? What has happened ? I dare say I’ve 
done as bad things to myself before ! ” Stroking her face as he lay 
in her arms, his tears mingled with hers ; noticing it, he restrained 
his own by a supreme effort. “ I dare say I can get down and 
walk,” trying, and falling back with a groan. “ Carry me to bed 
again, father — not mother, do not let her lift me ; she was so tired 
last night.” The bishop took him in his strong and tender arms 
and laid him down as he bade them. “ Mamma, lie on the bed 
beside me now,” he said, “ and do not leave me while I sleep. Do 
not mind, darling. Only let me rest. I shall soon wake up quite 
well ! ” 

He quickly lapsed into unconsciousness, from which he never 
woke again. He had struck his head heavily in falling ; and his 
delicate constitution was unable to bear the shock. It was that, 
rather than the actual injury, which killed him. 


286 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


‘‘ Save him, husband ! ” Victoria cried, distraught with fear. 
“ Save him ! What has become of all your power ? ” 

“The doctors have been sent for,” Helen Keltridge sobbed. 

“ Doctors ! what’s the good of doctors ? If you cannot save 
him, husband, no one can. Why has your power with Heaven 
departed from you ? Save him ! ” she commanded, as she saw the 
hues of the lovely countenance change and settle in death. “ If 
you do not save him now I will never speak to you again ! Do you 
hear me ? ” The bishop knelt with his face buried in the coverings 
of the little bed, and made no sign. She shook him in her agony. 
“ I will leave you,” she said, “I will renounce you! I only stayed 
by you for his sake. If he dies I shall hate you, do you hear ? Do 
you comprehend ?” she said, again seizing him by the arm, which 
she violently shook in her agonized grasp. “ When you were a 
common canon you saved his life by your power with Heaven, can 
you not save him now you are a bishop ? ” 

He opened his book and began to read the prayers for the depart- 
ing soul. 

“ Not that ! ” she cried, “ not that ! What is the use of that ? 
Any curate could read that ! ” And seizing the book she flung it 
in her passion across the room. But the child spoke once again ; 
only the bishop caught the words, the mother was past understand- 
ing the sense of any words pronounced by him, even though they 
might be the last she might ever hear from his lips. The child 
raised himself up, and pointing to the bottom of the bed : 

“ See,” he said, “ mother ! father ! By the golden gate someone 
waits for me : his face is black but he smiles at me, and he stretches 
out his hands to me.” 

Helen Keltridge thought he was delirious, but Dr. Garfoyle 
remembered the dying miner who had seen the face of Christ in 
the dafkness of the mines, and recalled his words, “ I go to take 
care of the child for you till you come, which will not be long.” 
And he bowed his head in thankfulness at the double promise, 
doubly accepted by him now. The bishop stooped, and gathering 
up the flowers which still strewed the floor, just as they had fallen 
first in the child’s happy play, and afterward when Victoria had 
flung them in his face, he reverently placed them on the bed, 
beneath the child’s pale hands. Victoria lay motionless now, giv- 


WHAT HELD HER BACK 


287 


ing no more sign of vitality than the lovely fonn beside her, from 
which the bright young life had fled. 

Helen Keltridge slipped from the room, leaving the husband and 
wife together. Then Victoria started up afresh, but with gentle 
force the bishop replaced her on the couch, dominating her frenzy 
by his austere self-possession. 

“ Hush, my beloved ! ” he said; “ do not disturb the moments of 
your child’s passing soul ; the Master has already called him unto 
Himself; no word or act of ours can avail to keep him with us. 
Good spirits wait for him. Christ receives him. Tlieir very pres- 
ence is around us. Do you not feel it ? Though you cannot realize 
it, I tell you that it is so, that I know it ! ” 

When they took him from her she rose only to gather all his 
little clothes and belongings together on the bed, and there she lay 
surrounded by them ; gathering them like flowers up to her face, 
and dwelling in the perfume of loveliness and youth which they 
still exhaled, fresh from the sweet child’s service. She only spoke 
of outside things once ; that was to enquire about the groom, whom 
she ordered to be sent to her at once. 

“How did it happen ?” she enquired, when the man, wdth his 
head bent and his face covered with surgical bandages, appeared 
in her presence. 

“ You saw it, madam,” he stammered. “ I did my utmost.” 

“ I know that; but what frightened the pony first?” 

He stammered out the tale of Shadrach’s whistle. So it was 
doubly Shadrach’s doing. She knew already that the last scene in 
the fatal tragedy bad been due to his folly. 

“ I thank you,” she said to the frightened, trembling man, who 
stood in terror of her wrath. “ I thank you. You have done your 
duty. I have nothing to reproach you with. I hope you may 
recover soon. But let me hear the pony shot. It must be done at 
once. Let me hear it. Do you understand ? ” 

And having given the order she lay listening, and her husband 
and Helen Keltridge noted the cruel gleam of attention in her eyes 
till she heard the fatal shot. 

“ I w^ould to my soul,” she cried, starting up, “ that it were the 
boy Shadrach! ” Then turning toward her husband and raising her 
voice she said : 


288 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


“Mind, if when I go downstairs again I find tliat wretch is in the 
house, I will kill him ! If ever I see him again I will kill him, and 
I will drive his mother out of the house. Her boy has killed mine. 
To think that that wretched, worthless rubbish of humanity, that 
common, cheap, vulgar wretch should live, and mine, my beautiful, 
my darling, my rare, priceless treasure should die ! Let them go ! 
Send them away! Let them beg! Let them starve, Pye, Trupper, 
and boy! I would give her her son in his coffin if I could. Never 
let them come near me again ! ” 

Victoria did not allude to the boy Shadrach again. The women, 
Trupper and Pye, were carefully kept out of her sight, as well as 
the lad himself. Helen Keltridge entirely waited on her herself. 
Either she or Dr. Garfoyle never left the room until the day on 
which all that remained of the fair and lovely boy was laid to rest 
beneath the shadow of the cathedral, in the beautiful cloister 
garth. 

The funeral had taken place, her husband was sitting by the side of 
the bed which she had never left since the catastrophe, when Vic- 
toria suddenly expressed a wish to be moved to the window, whence 
she could obtain a sight of the garden and grounds below ; and Dr. 
Garfoyle, stepping to the window, drew up the hitherto carefully 
closed blinds. He helped his wife to rise and to dress, and, placing 
the couch near the window, opened it to admit the reviving breeze, 
rejoicing that she showed signs of a disposition to interest herself 
so far in the still flowing stream of the life around her. She fixed 
her eyes intently but silently on the now mended bar, on the nar- 
row roadway between the grassy lines of the park and the garden 
wall. He saw that she was watching narrowly, intently for some- 
thing ; but he could not fathom her precise thought. 

“ Leave me ! ” she said imperiously, turning suddenly to the 
grieved, heart-stricken man. “ Leave me ! do you suppose that 
your presence, or that of any other human being, is any comfort 
to me, now that I have lost my all 

He rose, yet hesitated, doubly afraid to take her at her word, or 
to contradict her. He determined to try an appeal, but before he 
could frame the words she insisted more gently : 

“ Leave me ! Go and ask Helen Keltridge to come to me, if 
you object to leaving me alone. You are driving me mad by watch- 


WHAT HELD HER BACK 


289 


ing me. Why must I always be watched ? Why must I never be 
alone ? I tell you I cannot endure it. I am being treated as 
though I were a lunatic ! Leave me, I say! You can return in 
half an hour if you must.” 

He looked at her searchingly; she met his gaze with self-pos- 
session. There might well be truth in her words; that constant 
supervision might be aggravating her mental condition. His very 
watchfulness might well produce the mischief against which he 
sought to guard. 

“I will leave you, my beloved,” he said. “ You will ring if you 
want either Mrs. Keltridge or myself. Ho one else shall come near 
you. If we do not hear your bell, one or other of us will return in 
half an hour.” 

He went ; and the moment he had closed the door she mut- 
tered : 

“ You will return too late ; too late in this house, too late in this 
world ! How is my time at last ! ” 

She put on a hat, but remained watching at the window, her 
eyes turning from the clock to the courtyard below. In about 
three minutes she seemed to see what she had waited for. The boy 
Shadrach came out of the yard door and took his way to school, 
through the shrubbery which ran by the wall of the kitchen- 
garden to the paddock beyond, which skirted a little spinney, 
separated only by a wooden paling from the grounds of Croyland 
Court. Slie had discovered somehow that the bishop had placed 
the boy as a boarder in the choir school, to remove him from the 
house ; but she had also learned that he had been present at the 
funeral, that he would at this hour be returning to the school- 
house in the town. Swiftly and silently Victoria slipped down the 
back-stairs, using the exit known to herself and to the boy alike ; 
she met no one and pursued her course, escaping from the house 
by the customary window; the same by which, as she had con- 
fessed to Helen Keltridge, she had been in the habit of entering 
unperceived. Silently she pursued the object of her hatred, 
through the shrubbery wliich he had only just entered upon. 

Shadrach heard footsteps behind him coming swiftly on, and 
instinctively he knew that his doom was pursuing him. He 
remembered the blow by which in her frenzy of anguish Bruce’s 
19 


290 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


mother had struck him to the earth, when he made the fatal mis- 
take of closing the double-bar. He remembered the thrashing 
which the coachman had given him upon the groom’s representa- 
tion of his share in the frightening of the pony ; he had the coro- 
ner’s reproof still sounding in his ears from the inquest, when with 
the verdict of “ accidental death ” the important functionary had 
relieved his personal feelings by expressing a warm wish that he 
could legally order Shadrach the flogging which the coachman 
needed no such sanction to administer. He knew that his mother 
and his Aunt Pye had already packed their boxes, and that he 
himself had paid the last visit which would be permitted to the 
house where he had hitherto enjoyed the privileges of a favored 
home. 

The boy was wretched. He had sobbed out his miserable grief 
to his mother, when he had “wished he might have died” in his 
generous companion’s place ; still he valued that same life of his; 
and he realized keenly that now he must either take to flight, or 
fight for it with the infuriated maternal avenger whose footsteps 
were rapidly gaining upon him. He doubled and turned. This 
movement brought him back, as he meant that it should do, to within 
sight of the house, and of help ; it also brought him to the very 
spot of ground whereon the accident had taken place. As he 
neared it he saw with horror that the gate w-as mended, that the 
strong new bars were down, and that his passage was stopped by 
them. That Mrs. Garfoyle would kill him, if she caught him, 
Shadrach entertained not the slightest doubt ; that she had become 
“ a raving lunatic ” was the common vulgar talk of the servants’ 
hall ; by which his mother and aunt accounted for their own 
enforced change of place. 

Victoria, too, was quick to perceive the advantage which the 
dropped bar gave her. With a cry of exultation she reached the 
boy and seized him as he flung himself upon the earth to crawl 
under the barrier. He was in the grasp of a woman who was 
assuredly momentarily mad with the thirst of revenge. She seized 
him, and dragging him up with a maniac’s strength she shook and 
beat him furiously, striking him violently on the head and face. 
Shadrach could not even scream, so tightly had she grasped him. 
She had clutched him by the throat, and his eyes were starting from 


WHAT HELD HER BACK 


291 


his head, for he was enduring the initiatory pangs of strangulation. 
But the bishop had been thoroughly uneasy at having to relinquish 
his careful watch ; and he and Helen Keltridge were both on the 
alert. They missed their charge before many minutes had elapsed, 
and help came quickly. 

The bishop was the first to reach the spot. He unclasped his 
wife’s hands with his strong, powerful fingers, and forcibly liber- 
ated the unhappy boy, who fell a shapeless lump of terror and of 
bruises on the ground where only five days before his gentle com- 
panion had met his fate. He found his voice now, and began to 
howl and bemoan himself in a manner quite reassuring to the 
bishop’s ears. Beneath the stern control of her husband’s author- 
ity Victoria suddenly became perfectly quiet ; but as the boy 
began to pick himself up, she spurned him with her foot. 
Having kicked him with all the force that remained to her, she 
turned to her husband, and said vehemently : 

“Why could I not kill him? I might have done it; I had 
sufficient time ! How, I shall never have another opportunity. 
Shall I tell you, Helen, why I did not kill him ? It was only 
because I could not soil my hands with his blood. What a strange 
instinct,” she muttered as they led her back to her room, “ stronger 
than hate itself, the dislike of soiling one’s hands. Think of it ! I 
would give my life to have killed that wretched boy. I meant to 
do it ; nothing hindered me, no lack of power, or of will, or of 
opportunity; nothing but the shrinking from the disgust of seeing 
his blood on my hands. Oh, I would to Heaven I could have done 
it,” and she began to weep bitterly, “but I was too refined ! Take 
me away ! Take me away ! Hever let me see him again, or one 
of his hateful family. Pye slandered me in town, I know she did. 
That is how these creatures requite kindness. To think that that 
low, worthless thing should live and grovel there, and that he 
should have had the power to do what he has done! I was watch- 
ing for him. I have watched for him every day. I knew he 
would come here to-day.” 

By this time the servants had begun to collect, alarmed by Shad- 
rach’s shrill, piercing cries. His hurts were nothing ; but his voice, 
so exquisite in song, was an engine which he well knew how to use 
as an instrument of torture. Unfortunately Mrs. Trupper was one 


292 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


of the first to respond to her boy’s outcries. At the sight of her 
Victoria’s excitement was doubled. The bishop found it necessary 
to use all the force he possessed to lead his wife safely away. 

“ Send that woman off ? ” she cried. “ Her boy is living, let her 
take him and go! ” 

He assured her that the mother and son were both leaving, that 
she need never meet them again ; but when he got her back to the 
room which had been Bruce’s, and which was the only one she 
chose to occupy, she suddenly pulled out all the drawers, and began 
putting together her own and her child’s things. 

“ I will go myself,” she cried ; “ why should I stay with you ? 
What are you, what is any man on earth to me now ?” 

In his longing, aching tenderness, he tried the force of an appeal, 
for he did not regard her as being entirely incapable of self-control. 

“ Will you not stay with me ? ” he pleaded, kneeling before her. 
‘‘ Shall we not mourn him together ? Gladly would I have given 
my life for his, Victoria ! It will not be for long. It will be for a 
very little time that I shall live to be your husband. You do not 
know it, but it is so. Stay with me, my heart’s love, just for the 
short time that is left me here ; let us take a tour together some- 
where, anywhere you choose, but let us go together. Has not the 
love of the child made us one ? Who can mourn with you as I 
can ? ” 

“ You ! and why should you die ? ” she answered, almost in 
scorn. “ Was he your son ? Is it not for me to follow him and 
not you? Why should you escape when your lips have barely 
touched the cup of suffering, while mine — young as I am — have 
drunk it to the dregs ? What have you known ? What has your 
life held of agony ? Why do you speak of yourself at all ? What 
is your sorrow to mine ? Were you his mother? Did you cherish 
him from infancy ? Did you find the meaning of your life in his 
existence? Was he all that remained to you of the perfect love of 
your youth ? Were you even his own father? Why should you 
be permitted to die while I live ? Alas ! ” she cried, answering her 
own questions in the terrible cruelty of her bitter pain, “ alas I you 
are old, you are over fifty, and I am still young. Yes, I believe it 
is true,” she said, stopping and scrutinizing his worn and attenuated 
countenance, ‘‘ I believe it is true, and you know it already ; you 


A BENEDICTION 


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will be able to die and escape ; you are more than twenty years 
older than I am.” 

“ If so, should you not like to feel, Victoria, that I was taking 
care of Bruce for you still ? Perhaps it was too late for me to take 
all the care that I desired of you both in this world. You were 
right after all, I fancy, when you gave me this ring, my dearest 
wife.” 

Then, impulsive as ever, Victoria turned and took all her treas- 
ures out of the boxes in which she had begun to pile them, and laid 
them back in the drawers. 

“ I will stay,” she said. “After all, this was his room and I 
will live here. It was here that he played and learned ; and all the 
house is consecrated by his footsteps. What have I left on earth 
besides ? ” 

“ Oh, my love, be comforted,” the bishop entreated. “ He has 
not known death ! We alone have tasted of its bitterness. He 
lay in a restful dream. The smile with which he fell asleep never 
vanished from his dear lips, which lines of grief will never harden 
now. He has passed, with the flowers which he gathered in his 
hand, from our home, of which he was the soul and the delight, to 
a state without sorrow or loss which shall hourly grow nearer to us 
through him. But, indeed, it is near already, although unperceived : 
surely he is still with us, though upon some purer plane, invisible 
to our grosser sense, closer, it may be, in our dreams ; and the vision 
of his face and the echo of his voice shall be to us the pledge that 
indeed our lives shall meet in union with the perfect love. Surely 
once to have possessed him shall be always to possess ! ” 


CHAPTER XXV 

A BENEDICTION 

The Dean of Croyland, a dignifled and portly ecclesiastic, and 
his wife, were slowly walking down the road which led to the 
bishop’s mansion, one lovely day in the summer following that in 
which Bruce Goldenour was killed by the fall from his pony. They 


294 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


had reached the spot in the grounds where the boy had met with 
the accident. 

“ Poor child ! ” said the dean’s wife, panting with heat and exer- 
tion, and glad to come to a standstill. “ It was very sad ; but 
sadder still for liis mother and the dear bishop. It drove her out 
of her mind, I suppose, and I shall always believe that it has 
broken his heart. I wonder what queer collection we shall find at 
the Court now.” 

“ If Mrs. Garfoyle were at home,” remarked the dean, “ the bishop 
would scarcely be able to convert the palace into a sort of almshouse 
for the diocese, as he now does. She would naturally wish to con- 
sider her house as her own : whereas, he regards it, it seems, as a 
house of rest for the diocese.” 

“ It’s a queer notion,” said the lady, recovering a little breath. 

“ I imagine,” pursued her husband, “ that his aim is to gather 
round him a family and household of faith.” 

“ I understand,” said the lady, ‘‘ that he depends greatly upon 
Mrs. Basil Boscombe’s assistance — such an extraordinary choice for 
him to make — and that she has quite recovered her health, and is 
always looking after the society there. I understand that the 
bishop takes none of his meals with his guests, except dinner, when 
he sits at the head of his own table, and then of course he controls 
the conversation. At other times Mrs. Basil Boscombe superintends 
the society. Such an extraordinary choice. Thej^ say she arranges 
everything, and acts as the hostess, and comes in every day. That 
woman ! ” 

“All the more need for the exercise of your own influence, my 
dear,” 

“Yes, to be sure,” said the lady. “I do look in as often as I can, 
but it is a very different matter to being the actual mistress of the 
establishment.” 

And the dean’s wife sighed, for she was only the wife of a dean, 
and she felt in herself all manner of excellent qualifications for 
playing a superior part, which were now wasted in her secondary 
situation. It pleased her to act the part of patroness to the wives 
of the inferior clergy; so she frequently looked in upon the 
bishop’s humble guests. Also she felt it incumbent upon herself 
to apologize for the protracted absence of the bishop’s lawful wife 


A BENEDICTION 


295 


and to teach Mrs. Basil Boscombe her own inferior place. How 
the bishop could select such a secular person to preside over his 
ideal family was a thing which the dean’s wife could never under- 
stand. 

“ I suppose Mrs. Garfoyle is quite out of her mind, poor thing? ” 
said one humble clergyman’s wife to the dean’s lady on this partic- 
ular afternoon. “We heard she went out of her mind after the 
death of her boy.” 

“Quite violent, was she not?” said another. “We heard that 
she nearly murdered the boy whose foolish conduct led to the sad 
affair; but Mrs. Basil Boscombe is so very reserved; she keeps us 
all at such a distance that really, though we are on the spot, we 
never hear a word.” 

The dean’s wife fell into the trap. 

“ Not quite insane,” she said decorously, for she wished to keep 
these clerical “ waifs and strays ” in due subjection, “ but some- 
thing like it.” 

“Poor thing ! she is very beautiful, is she not?” asked a third, 
thirsting for gossip. 

“ So much beloved, and so popular, was she not ?” said the first, 
obsequiously giving the dean’s wife a footstool. “ Why, it was in 
all the papers how she devoted herself at the time of the accident 
at the mines, and how she supported the charities of the diocese. 
It’s a sad thing for his lordship. Is she really in confinement, did 
you say ? ” 

“ No, no, not that,” said the dean’s wife ; “ only in the charge 
of her friends. The associations of this place are too painful for 
her. The doctors will not hear of her living here at present.” 

“We heard that she was always smoking cigarettes, and that 
she had become a Roman Catholic, and so did not think it right 
for the bishop to have married her, or for her to live with him,” 
whispered another visitor to her companion. 

All which gossip was sure to arise as soon as the dean’s wife 
made her appearance. In Mrs. Basil Boscombe’s presence it was 
never permitted. In “ that laywoman,” as the dean’s wife called 
her, the bishop had wisely secured a most able coadjutor in the 
control of the feminine part of the clerical society by which 
he surrounded himself. Mrs. Boscombe was not only a stanch 


296 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


friend of Victoria’s, who would allow no liberties to be taken 
with her name, but she was in all respects a clever and inde- 
pendent woman, and one superior to the limitations of party or 
sect. She was free from the prejudices of what the dean’s wife 
called “ the clerical waifs and strays,” and her sense and judgment 
far exceeded the powers of that lady herself. Having no dislike 
for any particular preferences in the professional party around her, 
Mrs. Boscombe was capable of being fair to all, and she aided the 
bishop loyally in his endeavors to make Croyland Court an asylum 
for those that needed it. 

The history of Victoria’s absence was this : One day, about a 
fortnight from the day of the boy’s funeral, during all which time 
she had never left the room which had been his, she had suddenly 
dressed herself for a journey, and, running downstairs to the bishop’s 
study, she informed him that she meant to go to Cambridge and 
stay with her friend, Helen Keltridge ; but first she must visit her 
boy’s grave. He immediately took her there himself, and finally 
conveyed her to her destination in person, rejoicing in her decision 
as a sign of returning interest in life. But for himself the step 
was a fatal one. She had resolutely refused to return to Croyland 
ever since. 

The bishop wrote to her constantly and visited her with affection- 
ate regularity; he tried all the means which love could prompt to 
induce her to come back, in vain. He was compelled to bow to the 
decision of her medical advisers, who declared her mind to be 
so affected by the shock, or rather series of shocks, from which 
she had suffered, that to attempt to bring her back, against her 
inclination, to the scene of the late disaster, would be to imperil 
her actual sanity. She refused to travel with him, to accompany 
him to any other residence, or to cast in her lot again with his, under 
any conditions which he could make. As far as the bishop was 
concerned, this was the final event in the tragic series. He returned 
alone to Croyland, feeling the time for persuasion or remonstrance 
was over ; and Victoria, after remaining some months longer with 
her friends, the Keltridges, took a house that chanced to be vacant 
next door to them, and settled herself there in an absolutely solitary 
mode of existence. 

She lived in entire isolation from the busy stream of life circu- 


A BENEDICTION 


297 


lating around her. She saw no society whatever, and apparently 
cared for none. How she passed her time at all was often puz- 
zling even to her intimate friend, Helen Keltridge. She had no 
outside interests, and she possessed no feminine taste for making 
employment for herself. For religion, politics, literature, she cared 
nothing. Social questions simply bored her. She seemed to have 
exhausted all the powers and faculties with which she was endowed 
in her short life of less than thirty years ; to have merged the feel- 
ing of years in the agony of the past moments. Victoria lived, in 
fact, in a waking dream, steeped to the lips in sorrowful memories, 
tortured alike in the visions of night and in the cruder realizations 
which beset her by day. She never, as a rule, spoke of the past ; 
but Helen Keltridge had more than one evidence that her attack 
upon Shadrach Trupper weighed much on her mind. She asked 
what the boy was doing, and seemed relieved to hear that the 
bishop had placed him in the cathedral school. 

“ It is wonderful,” she once said, “ how easily I might have 
become a murderess. In fact, in soul I am one. Nothing but 
sensitiveness and refinement held me back, nothing literally but the 
habit of keeping my hands clean. My beloved child loved that 
creature so,” continued Victoria. “ I have seen him with his dear 
arms round the other’s neck. He would share everything with him. 
Even then I often longed to send the boy away, but he had been of 
such service to my darling’s health at Milan. Think, Helen, how I 
must have loathed to see the common, vulgar child in bed, at table 
with mine, thriving when he drooped and suffered, unmoved when 
he was in pain, carelessly serving him by his mere indifference. 
When I was tormented with anxiety for Bruce, Shadrach would 
bid him help to lace his muddy boots. Ah, those boots ! I have 
seen them stuck up on my sweet boy’s bed to be fastened. And yet 
my husband was right. Even then my love admitted it, and 
endured it for love’s sake ; but afterward all that I had borne and 
suffered was gathered up in one ungovernable act of passion, 
and when I thrust him from me I saw, not Bruce’s arms round 
Shadrach ’s neck, but Shadrach’s boots on Bruce’s bed, and my 
sweet pale child with difficulty raising himself up to do the lad the 
service that he sought. But since then I have remembered that 
Bruce loved him so.” 


298 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


This was said with a great effort, on an evening when Victoria 
seemed to have a clearer interval of thought than common, and 
Helen Keltridge hailed the confession as a hopeful sign. These 
better moments surely would return, she thought ; but on the day 
that succeeded, and on all following days, the clouds seemed to 
have settled down again upon her spirit, and she alluded no more 
to anything that had happened, showed no disposition to see her 
husband and no inclination to return to her home. 

“ In short,” said Mrs. Gruter, to whom Helen Keltridge repeated 
this conversation, “ it is due largely to the civilized supply of hot- 
water cans usual in well-to-do houses that your friend has escaped 
her doom. Queer, was it not ? But, had her trade been one which 
would have rendered her indifferent to these things, no power 
on earth could have saved that boy, and yet a butcher or a cook 
would have been sooner hanged than she ; they would have brought 
it in that she was mad ; and yet, after all, what is madness ? Even 
the professor in his best days could never answer me that 
question ! ” 

Left thus alone. Dr. Garfoyle worked harder than ever at all 
matters requiring his attention. He was indefatigable in discharg- 
ing the duties of his office, with an ever-quickened zeal, and more 
thoughtful, loving care — always with the deepest inner conviction 
that the time remaining to him was so short. He was absent a 
great deal fi-om Croyland ; but when at home he took his place at 
the head of his own table, kindly, courteous, dignified as ever. 
While he thus spent his saddened life in converting lofty spiritual 
powers into good deeds for his fellows, the essential record of Dr. 
Garfoyle’s bereaved life was a mystery, sacred and secret between 
himself and Heaven. These things were hidden in the depth and 
ground of his chastened being, and his sorrows were faced in 
lonely communings in the voiceless silence of his desolate room. 
Now to his nights and days seemed only left the abiding memory 
of a lovely dream. The spring-time of his life came late and out of 
season ; the flowers which it brought with it had no root nor hold 
upon the earth from which they sprang. The fair temple of his 
life’s late promise had been laid waste by a sudden shock, shaken 
rudely stone from stone; yet over the fallen ruins gracious flowers 
of courtesy and healing blossomed for those around him. 


A BENEDICTION 


299 


At one stroke he bad lost the lovely boy whom he had loved as 
his own son, and the sweet woman for whom his soul was welling 
over with tenderness ; yet, as he sat alone and stricken down in the 
chamber once blessed by their occupation, not only did the bene- 
diction of Bruce’s memory remain to sanctify his home, but the 
sweet influence of the child descended upon him still, with the pure 
undying love of a sweet spirit. But in the blight which had 
fallen upon Victoria she was removed further from him than even 
by death itself. So close she still was to him, in fact ; so near was 
the memory of all her winning ways and words, of the soft colors 
of her cheek, and the shining brightness of her mocking eyes when 
she threw the flowers in his face, on that last morning that she 
lived with him. Now she was divided from him by a gulf the 
mournful echoes of whose waves upon the barren shore whereon his 
hopes were strewn replaced the delicious laughter that had sounded 
in his ears. Still he seemed to hear the mingled music of her own 
and her child’s voices in the air, and yet, although she lived for 
others, she seemed hopelessly cut off from him. 

When he paid his stated visits to Cambridge to see Victoria, 
Helen was struck with the alteration in his look and bearing. His 
face, always pale, had now blanched visibly, his hair had become 
thin and white. His strong frame was attenuated and bent. A 
change bad come over his spirit, once so free and resolute, and his 
outer man bore the marks of the severity of the struggle through 
which he had passed ; yet the experience had endowed his rich 
nature with magnificent accessions of power. At times he would 
speak, to those that had need of comfort, words which his inner 
ears had heard, of the mj^sterious secrets of consolation; but there 
remained always with him a sacred reserve, a holy silence, a hidden 
revelation too dear, too pure for utterance. Even his physical 
frame grew more and more interpenetrated, impressed, and purified 
by the submission of his will to the divine inspiration, until, to see- 
ing eyes, the very walls of his earthly tabernacle seemed luminous 
with the reflection of the indwelling spirit which animated it. The. 
tender green of spring melts into the wealth of summer only after 
it has won its final conflict over the bitter assaults of the wintry 
blasts, the blighting frosts, and the stinging winds of winter. The 
^ea gains its victory over the land in despite of the retrogression of 


300 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


the tides, and in the heart of conflict the soul of conquest lies for- 
ever hidden. 

There came at length an evening, two years after the boy Bruce’s 
death and his wife’s departure, whereon the bishop sat alone in his 
study, facing the light where the soft sunset of the dying day fell 
through the western elms. It was the room in which the bishop 
had lived, surrounded by his books, ever since he had taken up his 
abode at Crojdand Court. The atmosphere was calm and clear, all 
the colors of his environment were dim and harmonious about him. 
He reposed in his arm-chair, his fine head resting on its back ; by his 
side his writing-table ; two letters lay on it, both finished, closed 
and directed, types both of them of all things else in his well-ordered 
life — in one he resigned the bishopric, being unable longer to per- 
form its duties and knowing well that his last hour was rapidly 
approaching. The other letter was directed to his wife, to be 
opened by her on the next day after, when she should arrive after 
his departure, as he clearly foresaw that she would do. 

The house was absolutely quiet ; now and then the closing of a 
distant door was the only sound that reached Dr. Garfoyle’s ears. 
Croyland Court was, as usual, full of needy visitors, but it was the 
hour of the evening service at the cathedral; and it was a rule in 
the bishop’s house that all his guests should attend at the services, 
if possible. The distant sound of the organ reached him where he 
sat. He himself had come to the close of his earthly career, and 
with clear-eyed certainty he knew it well. Slowly and with full 
consciousness he had been treading the steeply descending path 
leading through the valley of shadows. Now with a deep inward 
force of conviction he knew and felt* that he had reached the end 
of his appointed time. He had had no definite illness, no doctor 
had been called in to see him. No human physician, as he well 
knew, held the gift of healing in scientific hands for him. His life 
was drawn from sources which science did not touch; its failure 
was distinctly due to causes be3^ond the power of science to defer 
or alter. 

During the last week only the bishop had relinquished one task 
after another. Until then he liad been able to walk to the cathedral, 
or to take his part in the services if he so desired. He had preached 
his last sermon only six days before, and had taken the head of his 


A BENEDICTION 


301 


own table; then he had become unable to descend the stairs ; and, 
as each morning dawned upon a new day, feebler and feebler grew 
his worn bodily frame. He had spent the last week almost entirely 
alone in his room, sitting as he sat now. These solemn liours were 
none too long for the retrospect of all that his life had held of joy 
and sorrow. He was consciously living through the days and 
hours again; in spirit retracing his steps over every darkened and 
every illuminated portion of his road ; so consciously that even his 
bodily senses seemed led to follow the old pathways, to see the 
vanished scenes, to hear the long- dispersed words, while his heart 
and brain suffered, loved, enjoyed, and learned the old lessons of 
his childhood, youth, and manhood, even those which Victoria 
had said that she would teach him. Yet ever was he as a spectacle 
to angels and to freed and saintly visitants, though hidden from 
the sight of men ; not in solitude, though neither wife nor child 
nor friend was near, but in rapturous unison with untold and invis- 
ible presences did he make his last entranced spiritual communion. 
Having dismissed his attendants he remained all night where he 
was ; the pulses of his bodily life grew weaker and ebbed rapidly, 
but for him there was no break in life. In the early morning 
hours his spirit won its power of stronger flight; his bodily taber- 
nacle remained pure and pale as chiselled marble, as the breaking 
light of a new day streamed in upon his steadfast face through the 
unclosed windows of his room. 

At half-past eleven on the night of the same day on which Dr. 
Garfoyle’s work was done, Helen Keltridge and her husband were 
just retiring to rest when they were startled by Victoria Garfoyle’s 
sudden appearance. She was, she told them, on the point of leav- 
ing by the night mail for Croyland. She would reach her destina- 
tion about five or six o’clock in the morning. She assigned no 
reason for this sudden determination, beyond stating the fact that 
she was irresistibly driven to go and see her husband. She de- 
clared that she felt compelled to go to him. This was a step she 
had never taken before during the two years of her absence. 
Helen rejoiced in the reappearance of her old impulsiveness as a 
sign of returning health and revived affection for her husband. 

Victoria’s manner was visibly altered; it was alert and decided. 


302 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


She seemed like a person awakened from a long sleep, who stood 
revived and refreshed upon the threshold of a new day. They 
accompanied her to the station, and saw her off. “She had not,” 
she said in answer to their enquiries, “ heard any worse account of 
her husband’s health but “ she felt obliged to go to him at once,” 
she “ could not conceive why.” She had remained away so long. 
She had made no previous arrangements for quitting her own 
house in Cambridge, but, impulsive as ever, she was rushing off to 
Croyland. 

“Helen Keltridge might see,” she said, “to everything that she 
left behind her.” She had but one idea, but one desire, to find her- 
self at home, at Croyland, “ beneath lier husband’s roof, within 
sight of her boy’s grave.” She had been “ very wrong,” she saw 
it now; she “blamed herself bitterly” for “remaining away so 
long”; but slie had been “as one walking in a dream,” who had 
now “ suddenly awaked.” She took a tender leave of Helen Kelt- 
ridge ; and begged her once more to arrange matters for her, as 
she had no intention of ever returning to Cambridge. Then she 
departed as suddenly as she had come two years before. 

Victoria travelled through the night ; but as soon as she reached 
her destination her footsteps carried her to Bruce’s grave. She 
knelt beside it in the cloister garden, caressing with her hands the 
very moulds of earth which in that place seemed the nearest thing 
to the child she loved. The turf and flowers were as carefully 
kept as though she had been there herself. Into her mind came 
words that her boy had once in rapture spoken of Croyland Court 
as his new home, that “ wherever they three were together there 
was home ; home and heaven were one — and heaven was there.” 
“ Surely with angels about him she — his mother — must still find a 
place in his heart.” Alas ! it was neither “home nor heaven” to 
her now, this stately mansion wherein she was almost a stranger ! 
Yet let her seek at once all that was left to her, and taste the love 
which she still possessed. 

The music of a morning hymn reached her from the cathedral. 
There was an early six o’clock service, and Victoria remembered that 
the bishop, whenever he was in residence, had been in the habit of 
officiating at it. He would be there now. She turned in to see ; 
but one of the archdeacons, the assistant clergy, and the choir 


A BENEDICTION 


303 


alone appeared before her anxious eyes. Unobserved, she hurriedly 
retraced her steps, and took the road to her old home. She passed 
again over the ground so fatal to her happiness, with an awful pang 
of agony; she recognized the new barrier, the very stones on which 
her boy had fallen. Her reason almost failed her at the sight ; her 
limbs trembled beneath her, she grew dizzy, and could not for a 
moment proceed ; she sank down upon the very spot, living again 
through those supreme moments. But again the impulse, not 
reasoned out, came over her ; she got up, giddy and uncertain at 
first, and reached the old entrance; she knew that the servants would 
not be about yet, and that the front door would be closed. She 
sought the little window at the back by which she used to enter ; 
it was unfastened as usual, and admitted her as in days gone by. 
No one was likely to be met at this hour, and she silently passed 
up the stairs, and on into the room which had been her child’s 
first, and afterward her own. There all was unchanged. The 
room was haunted by vivid memories. 

Victoria felt unutterably lonely ; longing, yearning for her hus- 
band’s love, for his comfort, for his presence. She was as one but 
just awakened from a long and troubled dream, wherein all shapes 
have become ill defined, all motives turbid, all imaginations con- 
fused. Now she saw clearly, and felt strongly ; why had she ever 
left Hr. Garfoyle? What had induced her to forsake the shelter 
of the name, and the companionship of one so loving and so true ? 
She had loved him so well, as she had cried out to him the night 
before her boy had died — when he stood on one side of the door 
of Helen Keltridge’s room, and she on the other. Why must she 
always shut a door between them ? Now she would open the door. 
She would return. There should be no separation, no division any 
more. She had been quite another person ; another self to the one 
in which she now recognized her truest personality. 

In spirit Victoria already felt her husband’s arms around her ; 
never would she leave him more. In this hour her eyes had been 
opened to see and know their union real, existing, enduring. She 
had come back, never to leave him again. How often had he 
petitioned her ; how had she not seen his eyes praying to her to 
return ; and she had answered his pathetic appeals with repeated 
refusals, how often ! And now she had come back of her own 


304 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


accord. She knew he would be within ; he was always in his 
room, naturally, at this hour, always alone. It was an hour which 
he always reserved for the communing of his spirit with the all- 
pervading love. There would be no disruption in her entrance ; 
it would be in harmony with his thoughts. She ascended the stairs, 
opened tlie door of his study, and passed in. She knew where he 
sat at this early morning hour, in his chair, facing the window. 
And she was right ; he sat there even as she had foreseen ; calm 
and motionless, resting in the large chair in which he always used 
to sit. No book was in his hand. His eyes were closed as though 
in sleep ; they had no viewless vision. His attitude was one of com- 
plete repose. Victoria fell at his feet and embraced them, crying : 

“ Bless me, even me ; oh, my father ! ” But there was no answer, 
save in the letter which lay — directed to her — upon the table. 

The moment in which Victoria came to herself had been the 
moment in which the benison of her husband’s liberated spirit had 
descended upon her, bringing her the boon of restored mental 
health, which in life he had been powerless to win for her, in spite 
of many tears and prayers. It was by the exercise of this power 
that she had been brought to a new birth, a new being ; when 
restored in judgment, will, and affection, she had been irresistibly 
driven to return to his side. The letter which the bishop had left 
for his wife thus spoke to her : 

“ My Beloved : 

“ I have sent for you, and you will not fear to come this time, 
for the door which ‘ shutting out, lets in no more,’ will be closed 
between us before you arrive. My love will serve you better so ; 
I have been unable to do for you here all that I would. But it has 
been shown me that my spirit will have power to liberate yours so 
soon as it is itself freed from the bonds of flesh and blood. You 
will awaken, my beloved, calm, and bright, and happy. You will 
realize that you are yourself again. You will know that I have 
gone to be with your darling child, Bruce. You will rejoice to 
think that we are reunited. In spirit you will be with me as you 
have never been, and with me you will be reunited to your child. 
Hitherto we have all three been divided ; once again we shall be 
together, and it will be given me to shield and protect you, as I 


A BENEDICTION 


305 


have been unable to do in this bodily condition. You shall never 
blame yourself that you left me : you were not wrong in what 
you did ; the instinct was a true one which led you to hide your- 
self till you had recovered from the awful shock which shat- 
tered your nerves and reacted upon your whole mental condition. 
It was indeed my deepest desire that you should remain under my 
roof, that I might be a father to you, and that through me you 
might be brought into nearer and more comforting knowledge of 
your continued union with your child, since it was given me all 
along to know him near, to feel his angelic presence, to realize the 
sweetness of his spirit’s touch upon our spirits. All this I have 
yearned to show j^ou ; but it might not be. It was withheld from 
you. But through me you will know it now. I could not teach it 
yoij before. Now I shall be able to bring to your consciousness 
the knowledge that our spiritual union is complete; and I shall 
have the power to guide you on your way through life. Love, you 
are young, you are not fit to be alone. Find some husband, good 
and true, who will be tender to you; become the mother of other 
children, and you shall know and realize through a long life that 
shall be prosperous and happy in years to come, that we two — 
Bruce and I — guard and cherish you, and wait for you until you 
come. To you now the years may seem long to traverse, yet 
remember that ‘ with the Nameless is not day nor hour. Though 
we thin minds, who creep from thought to thought, break into 
“thens ” and ‘‘ whens” the Eternal now.” ’ Do not regret me, 
my darling ; think of me only as watching over you and yours — 
and may the blessing of the Eternal be over you.” 

They laid the bishop, by his own special desire, to rest beside the 
boy whom he had loved so well, in the shadow of the cathedral, 
beneath the greensward of the cloister burial-ground; and the 
sacred aisles of the cathedral resounded to the glorious strains of a 
triumphant Funeral March. When the entrancing beauty of the 
music of Spohr’s magnificent anthem reached her ears, Victoria 
recognized the wonderful voice which had so often served to uplift 
the bishop’s soul in the performance of some repugnant task for 
those he had served so meekly. The faultless harmony of the 
exquisite tones rang out as though the singer, knowing neither sin 
20 


306 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


nor sorrow, soared to some higher heaven than those that heard. 
Through all the arches of the cathedral the sweet strains swept, 
echoing in the clear-story of the roof : and Victoria, moved by the 
depths of her emotions, listened rapt and ravished out of the bitter- 
ness of her pain ; lost in a strange new sorrow, wherein joy and 
anguish met and melted into one full tide of being. Floated on a 
rapture the intenser that its motive was hidden in the very heart of 
aching and mysterious sorrow, joy and agony met in the birthday 
of an awakened soul, and Victoria forgave the singer for the love 
of those by whom he had been loved so well. 

‘‘ Yes, indeed it is a very wonderful voice, and I believe they are 
all very proud of it,” said one listener to another, in the dense con- 
gregation of those who came to pay their last respect to the bishop’s 
memory. ^ 

“ It is an exceedingly beautiful voice, no doubt, so strong and 
clear and true. He sings the solos in the anthems. People come 
from far and near to hear him. The boy is named Trupper, Shad- 
rach Trupper ; his father, a small farmer, hanged himself; and his 
mother was the bishop’s housekeeper. You see him ? that ugly 
lad, the third from the end; he is sticking out his muddy boots with 
the laces undone. He is the boy whose mischief or stupidity cost 
the bishop’s step-son his life. The bishop placed him in the cathe- 
dral school, and it is said he has provided for him.” 

‘‘ He sings,” said the first speaker, as though he were an angel, 
and could not commit a fault if he tried.” 

“ Whereas, in reality,” rejoined the other, “ he is the worst boy 
in the choir school. My husband is one of the masters, so I ought 
to know. He often says he would ‘give devout thanks if Trupper’s 
voice broke,’ and then they could flog him as he deserves ; whereas 
at present they have to take into account that if they make him 
howl, it may damage his voice for the anthem in the afternoon. 
The dear bishop always befriended him, but I believe Mrs. Gar- 
foyle never could endure the sight of him after the accident.” 

“Is she here to-day ?” 

“Yes, poor thing; it is such a mercy she has recovered suffi- 
ciently to be able to attend the service.” 

“ The bishop’s doctrine was very high, wasn’t it ? ” asked the 
stranger lady. 


APPENDIX 


307 


“ Nay, madam,” responded the Baptist minister, who sat on the 
other side of her, “ it was not his doctrine, but his spirit that was 
very high.” 


APPENDIX. 

Fifteen years later a husband and wife sat together in a 
luxurious drawing-room, over a fire piled with logs, on a Christmas 
Eve, at North Hall, — Mr. John Pengelley’s country-house on the 
Huntingdon Road, — some nine miles out of Cambridge. Their 
children were all sleeping in their beds above, only the infant lay 
in a cradle by its mother’s side. The wife sat on one side of the 
fire, the husband on the other. Outside the wintry wind rustled 
in the trees, otherwise no sound came to break the stillness of the 
remote country-house which furnished this warm nest of love. 
The light was shaded, but not so effectually as to hide the fact 
that the wife was beautiful in feature, in coloring, and in form. 
She bore the marks of experiences made and of duties happily dis- 
charged, but her aspect was still that of a comparatively young 
and completelj^ prosperous woman. The husband was unmistak- 
ably a stout, well-fed, rich, and comfortable English country 
gentleman, who preserved his own game, bred his own cattle, and 
shot over his own covers. He was somewhat somnolent now, 
having smoked the pipe sacred to the repose of his evening hours, 
and drunk the moderate potation with which he was accustomed to 
season it. But his wife was used to talking without getting any 
replies, so she chattered pleasantly, more to herself than to him. 

“I went into Cambridge this morning, John. There was a 
special service at St. Am well’s, and for the sake of old associa- 
tion I turned in to see what was going forward. There was a new 
curate, and he was preaching his first sermon. He was daring ; 
wanted to make an impression, as you will know when I tell you 
his text. Who do you think it was ? I knew him at once. Posi- 
tively it was Shadrach Trupper.” 

At this the husband awoke, and fixed his eyes with kindly interest 
and sympathy upon his wife. 

“And the text ? ” he enquired. 


S08 


THE HUSBAND OP ONE WIFE 


“Was ‘Whose wife shall she be in the resurrection?’ Think 
of it, John ! for his first sermon ! Like a half-bred young man, was 
it not ? Raw in taste and poor in experience ? And he dwelt 
upon it, too ; whose she should be of the seven. Like a young prig, 
wasn’t it ? ” , 

“ I’ve not the least doubt, my dear, that the woman herself knew 
all about it,” murmured the husband, half asleep again, and only 
anxious to be complimentary to the superior intelligence of women 
in general, and of his own wife in particular. 

“ Neither have I,” she answered thoughtfully. “ She would 
know which of all the seven had been the husband of her soul, had 
had most power to lift her spirit up. He, I suppose, would be her 
final choice. Possibly there are spiritual husbands as well as 
bodily husbands.” 

But here Victoria was out of her husband’s depth, as well as her 
own, and in fact he was peacefully nodding again. 

“ While Shadrach rashly talked of what lie knew nothing about, 
a wonderful thing happened to me, John,” his wife said to Mr. 
Pengelle}^ 

“ Yes, my dear,” said the sleepy man, half-opening his eyes. 
“ You saw a spider, or broke a glove-button, I suppose.” 

Victoria waited a moment till he was sounder asleep, then she 
said to herself : 

“ No matter, I will say it all the same. It is best that the dear 
fellow should not hear it, for he would not understand. I forgot 
that Shadrach was preaching. I went into a kind of dream, and in 
that dream I seemed to be once more listening, not to him, but to 
my second husband, the bishop, and he spoke only to me. He said 
that because I had loved so much I had been forgiven all the 
things concerning him with which I had often reproached myself. 
He said that I had learned the secrets of intimate soul union, and of 
spirit communion, out of my own very loving nature — a nature 
that seemed thereby to have been exalted and sanctified. I had 
been thinking when I went into the church of the description of a 
bishop as ‘the husband of one wife,’ and of a man I had just lately 
met at tea at Helen Keltridge’s.” 

“‘The husband of one wife’ — well, so am I, am I not?” asked 
John Pengelley indignantly, waking up. 


APPENDIX 


309 


‘‘No doubt, my dear ; but I was not speaking- of you, but of a 
very much cleverer man than you are, whom, as I said, I met at 
teaj and this man supposes himself to liave discovered that we are 
all made up of ever so many individualities in one person. I guess 
he made that discovery when he was quite a young man too, and 
found himself a different man with every different woman that he 
adored, don’t you ? ” 

“ No, my dear, I only adored you from the very beginning,” 
murmured her heavy-headed lord. 

“ Again, I was not talking of you, you dear sleepy fellow, but of 
quite another man; of a man who has found out that you can be 
half a dozen persons all in one ; some good, some bad ; can love 
differently this one and that one, but equally, truly, all and each. 
All that he professes, or asserts, I — Victoria Pengelley — found out 
long ago. It is an old lesson ; love teaches it to some of us when 
we are quite young; it complicates all our lives ; it fills our hands 
with thorns when we pluck our roses ; but we know that it is true, 
though we state it differently, or even though unable to find w'ords 
for it at all. No one love exhausts the capacities of the human 
soul ; no one is dearer possibly than another, though one may be 
higher and another lower. Now you^ dear John, have been the 
kindest husband woman ever had, and our children are the dearest 
treasures possible to possess; yet I know that Terence Garfoyle 
was the husband of my soul; that all that was highest in me 
ever aspired toward an inner union with his spirit. I was not 
worthy to be his wdfe on earth, and spiritually I discerned the fact; 
it was a true upward impulse which made me desire to be associated 
wdth him ; but the sustained flight was beyond me, ‘ my flesh 
shrank from seconding my soul.’ I found that out in Brow^ning 
afterward. There were moments when I touched the heights at 
which I met him ; but I sank down again, and in the reaction that 
followed I shrank from the painful conflict, and fell lower than 
before ; but when I get to heaven, John, in that state, if I am 
wife or mother at all, I would be once more the wife of Terence 
Garfoyle, and the mother of Bruce Goldenour ! ” 

But John Pengelley made no immediate answer to his wife’s last 
words ; indeed, she fully believed, before she permitted herself to 
utter them, that he was far too drowsy to have caught their mean- 


310 


THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE 


ing. He had heeil out with three dogs and a gun, tramping over 
heavy land all day. At that instant the infant in the cradle cried, 
and Victoria gathered it to her bosom with a gesture that 
indubitably showed how her nature was appeased with happiness. 

But Victoria’s fine-tempered husband was not quite so steeped in 
slumber as she had imagined him to be. 

“ Well ! well ! ” he said, rising with a mighty yawn, “ I can quote 
Browning too, though it may surprise you : 

“ Heaven speaks first 

fo the Angel, then the Angel tames the word 
Down to the ears of Tobit : he in turn 
Diminishes the message to his dog. 

You remember that, my dear ? I am as sleepy as a hound, and 

Ah ! well ! All’s said ! Come, Victoria. Pick up the baby. The 
day’s done.” 


THE END. 


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Christowell 

. .4to 

20 

Cradock Nowell 


60 

Rromn 


50 

Kit and Kitty.. 


35 

Lorna Doone (illustrated) 


40 

Mary Anerley 


15 

Springhaven (illustrated).. . . 


25 

Tommy Upmore 

IGmo 

35 


4to 

20 

VICTOR HUGO. 



Ninety-Three 


25 

Toilers of the Sea 


60 


CIIARLES READE. PRICE 

A Perilous Secret 12mo $0 40 

Singleheart and Doubleface, &c. 

(illustrated) 4to 15 

A Hero and a Martyr 8vo 15 

A Simideton .8vo 35 

A Woman-Hater (illustrated). .8vo 30 

12ino 25 

Good Stories (illustrated). . . .12mo 50 


“ 4to 20 

Foul Play 8vo 30 

White Lies 8vo 30 

Peg WolQngton, and Other Tales 

8vo 35 

The Jilt (illustralied) 32mo 20 

The Coming Man 32mo 20 

The Picture lOino 15 

Jack of All Trades lOino 15 

GEORGE ELIOT. 

Felix Holt 8vo 50 

Middlemarch 8vo 75 

Daniel Deronda 8vo 50 

Roniola (illustrated) ...8vo 50 

Scenes of Clerical Life 8vo 50 

Silas Marner 12mo 25 

Adam Bede 4to 25 

Amos Barton 32mo 20 

Mr. Gillil’s Love Story 32mo 20 

Janet’s Repentance 32mo 20 

Brother Jacob. — The Lifted Veil 

32mo 20 

WILLIAM BLACK. 

A Daughter of Heth 8vo 35 

An Adventure in Thule 4to 10 

Donald Ross of Heimra 8vo 50 

Green Pastures and Piccadilly. 8vo 50 

In Far Lochaber 8vo 40 

In Silk Attire 8vo 35 

Judith Shakespeare 4to 20 

Kilmeny 8vo 35 

Macleod of Dare (ilPd).4to, 15; 8vo . 60 

Madcap Violet 8vo 60 

Monarch of Mincing Lane (illus- 
trated) 8vo 50 

Prince Fortunatus (illustrated) 8vo 50 

Sabina Zembra 4to 20 

Stand Fast, Craig- Roy ston (illus- 
trated) 8vo 50 

Strange Adv’s of a Phaeton. . . .8vo 50 
Strange Adventures of a House- 

Boat (illustrated) 8vo 50 

Sunrise 4:to 20 

The Maid of Killeena, &c 8vo 40 

Three Feathers (illustrated). . .8vo 50 
White Wings 4to 20 

H. RIDER HAGGARD. 

She (illustrated) 16mo 25 

King Solomon’s Mines 4to 20 

Jess 4; to 15 

Allan Quatermain (ilPd) IGmo 25 

Mr. Meeson’s Will 16mo 25 

Maiwa’s Revenge (ilPd) IGmo 25 

Col. Quaritch,V.C. (ilPd) IGmo 25 

Cleopatra (illustrated) IGmo 25 

'Beatrice (illustrated) IGmo 30 

The World’s Desire IGmo 35 

Eric Brighteyes IGmo 25 


WILLIAM M. THACKERAY, price 

Henry Esmond 

.4to$0 20 

Denis Duval (illustrated) 


25 

Great Hoggarty Diamond 


20 

Vanity Fair (illustrated) 

.8vo 

80 

Pendenuis (illustrated) 


75 

The Virginians (illustrated).. . 

.8vo 

90 

The Newcomes (illustrated) . , . 

.8vo 

90 

WALTER BESANT 



Uncle Jack and Other Stories.l2mo 

25 

All in a Garden Fair 


20 

Self or Bearer 


15 

For Faith and Freedom 


50 

The Bell of St. Paul’s 


35 

I’he Inner House 

.8vo 

30 

The World Went Very Well Then 


(illustrated) 


25 

The Children of Gibeon 


60 

The Holy Rose 


20 

Katherine Regina.- 


15 

Dorothy Eorster 


20 

To Call Her Mine (illustrated) 

. .4to 

20 

Herr Paulus 


35 

Armorel of Lyouesse (ilPd). . 

.. 8vo 

50 

All Sorts and Conditions of Men 


(illustrated) 


60 

St. Katherine’s by the Tower (illus- 


trated) 


60 

BESANT & RICE 

• 


Golden Butterfly 


40 

When the Ship Comes Home.32mo 

25 

’Twas in Trafalgar’s Bay. . . . . 

32mo 

20 

Sweet Nelly 


10 

Shepherds All and Maidens Fair. 



32rao 

26 

'I’he Chaiilain of the Fleet . . . 


20 

By Celia’s Arbor (illustrated) 
The Captain’s Room 

. .8vo 

60 


10 

W. CLARK RUSSELL. 


Auld Lang Syne 


10 

A Saik)r’^Sweetheart 


15 

A Sea Queen 


20 

A Strange Voyage 


20 

A Book for the Hammock. . . 


20 

Wreck of the “Grosvenor” . 

. .4to 

15 

An Ocean Tragedv 


60 

The“ Lady Maud ” (illustrated). 4to 

20 

Marooned 


25 

My Danish Sweetheart (ill’d) 

. .8vo 

60 

My Shipmate Louise 


60 

In the Middle Watch 

12mo 

25 

Little Loo 


20 

On the Fo’k’sle Head 


16 

Voyage to the Cape 

12 mo 

26 

Round the Galley Fire 


16 

The Golden Hope 


20 

The Frozen Pirate (illustrated) .4to 

25 

Mrs.Dines’sJewels(iltustrated).8YO 

50 

THOMAS HARDY 

• 


A Group of Noble Dames (illus- 


trated) 


75 

The Woodlanders 


20 

Fellow-Townsmen 

32mo 

20 

A Ijaodicean (illustrated) . . . . 


20 

Wessex Tales 


30 



Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 

Any of the above works sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, Canada, or Mexico, 

on receipt of the price. 


/ 



The Best for Family Reading. 


N O publishing house has yet succeeded in ministering, as the Harpers do, through their period- 
icals, to old and young, men and women seekers for current news graphically illustrated, 
scholars, travellers, and artists, and children of all ages. — Observer, N. Y. 

Its history is a large part of the literary 
history of the nineteenth century in America. 
— N. Y. Journal of Commerce. 

The only illustrated paper of the day that, 
in its essential characteristics, is recognized 
as a 7iational paper . — Brooklyn Eagle. 

To take it is a matter of economy. No 
one ca7i affo7'd to be without it . — Chicago 
Evening Journal. 

Harper’s Young People contains a 
marvellous amotmt of healthful and i7ite7'est- 
ing reading for young people of all ages a7id 
both sexes ^. — Boston Journal. 

Booksellers and Postmasters usually receive Subscriptions. Subscriptions sent direct to tlu Publishers should be 
accompanied by Post-office Money Order or Draft. When no time is specified. Subscriptions will begin with the current 
Number. Postage FREE in the United States, Canada, or Mexico. 

Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 

H 9 8fc V 


Harper’s Magazine. 

Issued Monthly. $4 00 Year. 

Harper’s Weekly. 

Issued Weekly. $4 00 a Year. 

Harper’s Bazar. 

Issued Weekly. $4 00 a Year. 

Harper’s Young People. 

Issued Weekly. $2 00 a Year. 




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